March 09th, 2017

Small-mammal borne zoonotic disease in Hawai‘i

​Dr. Amber Wright (center) and research technician Arielle Crews process a small Asian mongoose in conjunction with Dr. Wright's Hawaii Community Foundation funded study on Leptospirosis transmission ecology in Mānoa. 

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Dr.  Amber Wright (UHM Biology),  Dr. Robert Cowie (UHM PBRC), and Matt are launching a new line of research in Hawai‘i on the transmission ecology of zoonotic pathogens that utilize small mammals as reservoir hosts.  This line of research will include interrogating the patterns of multiparasitism in Rattus hosts and understanding how interactions between coinfecting pathogens within hosts may scale to influence transmission between hosts.  In addition, other related projects will investigate host specificity and transmission dynamics among strains of Leptospira across rats, mice, mongoose, and other mammals, as well as the spatiotemporal variation in the risk of  zoonoses associated with small mammal reservoirs in Hawai‘i. Recently, Amber, Matt, researcher Arielle Crews, and UH veterinarian Mike Wong conducted the field sampling protocol on some mongooses that we caught around Mānoa Stream.