Lecture 21

Question 1

What is the virome?

Answer 1

The collection of viruses within an individual, species or population

Question 2

What makes a virus emerge in a new population is a question

Question 3

Biotic factors that shape the virome

Answer 3

• preferential host switching
• host age

Question 4

What is preferential host switching

Answer 4

• viruses are more easily transmitted between closely related hosts
• parental host switching would mean that host taxonomy plays a key role in shaping virome composition

Question 5

What is preferential host switching

Answer 5

• viruses are more easily transmitted between closely related hosts
• parental host switching would mean that host taxonomy plays a key role in shaping virome composition

Question 6

Biotic factors that might shape the virome - host age

Answer 6

• most studied demographic factor that influences virome composition
• in humans gut viral diversity is age - dependent

Question 7

Biotic factors that might shape the virome - age of birds

Answer 7

Question 8

Abiotic factors that shape microbial community diversity

Answer 8

• studied best in marine systems
• ocean warming impacts on species distributions

Other key abiotic factors such as temperature, ocean depth, humidity, rainfall, elevation and seasonality may and all play a role in structuring the microbial community though modulating host population behavior or their role in transmission

• host biodiversity
  
  • the latitudinal diversity gradient, the concent that host species richness increases towards the equator (and at poles there aren’t many species as they’d have to be super specialised)
  • the dilution theory effect hypothesis suggests that there is a negative releationship between disease risk and host diversity. That is, high host diversity “dilutes” disease risk.

Question 9

Dilution theory effect… only a hyposthties.. how do u prove it?

Answer 9

Viral diversity was determined by whether there was livestock not just distance

(Sampling over a long time periods is a good idea as snapshot veiws of viral diversity are unlikely to be representative at the species level

Question 10

Dilution theory effect… only a hyposthties.. how do u prove it?

Answer 10

Viral diversity was determined by whether there was livestock not just distance

(Sampling over a long time periods is a good idea as snapshot veiws of viral diversity are unlikely to be representative at the species level

Question 11

Brazil?

Answer 11

(In 2008 only rlly infected like 10 people to a pandemic in 2015 why)

In 2015 they killed a bunch of Miskitos which allowed another species to come in and occupy that space (urban areas) with lots of people

Zika virus

Question 12

Why is it important to understand the factors that drive the composition of microbial communities ?

Answer 12

Disruption or invasion of ecological niches can lead to cross-species transmission (all past epidemics have been lead from disruption somehow)

Question 13

Are bats special

Answer 13

We dont know

Question 14

What is the ecology of bats which might potentially make them special

Answer 14

Bats harbour a high viral diversity relative to other mammalian orders

Question 15

Factors leading to nipah virus emergence

Answer 15

Question 16

An ecosystem approach to studying disease emergence

Answer 16

Question 17

What drives viruses to emerge?

Answer 17

Question 18

Two key things the keep in mind when studying microbial ecosystems

Answer 18

You are taking a sample from a population
- there will be variation between samples from the same population
- need to ensure that the study has enough statistical power to detect differences

Controls can be difficult to incorporate
- collect as much meta data as possible
- collect longitudinal data when possible

Question 19