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Symposium

Session: Zoonoses and the Agricultural Matrix: Integration and Synthesis for Landscape Immunity

SYMP 20-4 - Matrix matters: a new approach for understanding zoonoses emergence in agricultural landscapes

Thursday, August 18, 2022

2:30 PM – 2:50 PM EDT

Location: 524A

Presenting Author(s)

IP

Ivette Perfecto

University of Michigan, School for Environment and Sustainability
Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States

Co-author(s)

LC

Luis Fernando Chaves

Instituto Conmemorativo Gorgas de Estudios de la Salud, Panamá, Panama
KL

Kevin Li

University of Michigan, School for Environment and Sustainability
Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
GF

Gordon Fitch

University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States
ZH

Zachary Hajian-Forooshani

University of Michigan, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, United States
NM

Nicholas Medina

University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI, United States
JM

Jonathan R. Morris

Doctoral Candidate
University of Michigan, School for Environment and Sustainability
Ann Arbor, MI, United States
BO

Beatriz Otero

Stony Brook University
IR

Iris S. Rivera Salinas

PhD Student
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, United States
CS

Chenyang Su

University of Michigan, United States
KW

Kimberly Williams-Guillen

University of Michigan
AW

Alexa White

University of Michigan
JV

John Vandermeer

University of Michigan, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, United States

Background/Question/Methods
Land use change, along with changes in agriculture, are major drivers of zoonotic spillovers from wildlife to humans. The emerging narrative is that deforestation, fragmentation, and general conversion of forest to agriculture is accelerating zoonotic spillover by reducing biodiversity, allowing host reservoir populations to increase, and increasing human contact with wildlife. However, this narrative ignores that the quality of the agricultural matrix (i.e., how much the agricultural system resembles the natural/undisturbed system) varies with different kinds of agriculture, and how political economy influences both the quality of the matrix and the social relationships that drive disease transmission and determines whether a spillover event is merely spread locally and dies off, or has the potential to become a global pandemic. Pathogens have complex responses to environmental change across spatial and temporal scales. Such complexity does not negate the need to develop a general framework to understand the relationship between land use and zoonoses. But it does suggest that such analysis must be nuanced and incorporate the variety of agricultural matrices within which pathogens emerge, and through which they need to move, in order to reach centers of critical human population densities where rapid spread becomes possible.

Results/Conclusions
Here we present a novel approach to the land use-zoonoses relationship that, 1) focuses on the quality of the agricultural matrix and its potential to play a role in the emergence and transmission of zoonotic pathogens, and 2) places pathogen spillover and spread within a socio-economic and political context. Using examples of different kinds of agricultural matrices, we discuss the probability of emergence and transmission of pathogens and present a theoretical framework that allows for the incorporation of these factors in an analysis of zoonoses. This novel approach recognizes the complexities involved in the zoonoses-landscape interaction and distinguishes between different kinds of agricultural matrices and their impacts on emergence and transmission based on ecological and sociopolitical factors.