Biota Award - Impacts of rapid habitat change: Mammalian diversity and its response to deforestation in a global biodiversity hotspot

Project Aims and Objectives: Habitat loss and fragmentation are primary threats to biodiversity conservation and can lead to stress, immunosuppression, and disease in wildlife, thereby directly impacting populations. Additionally, these landscape changes increase zoonotic host diversity and have been linked to the incidence and emergence of zoonotic and vector-borne diseases. Such changes have accounted for over 30% of spillover events since 1940. Although habitat fragmentation may drive disease, impacts on wildlife are complex and currently not well understood. Rodents are reported to be important reservoirs for emerging zoonoses. Several rodent species account for the abundance increases in smaller remnants and edges in Paraguay, with several as important disease reservoirs. The proposed interdisciplinary, mechanistic research project simultaneously combines host-pathogen dynamics, stress hormone physiology, population genetics, biodiversity, and landscape ecology.