Meeting Abstract

S6.10  Wednesday, Jan. 5  Can immunology predict host quality for disease transmission? KEESING, F; Bard College keesing@bard.edu

Recent research in a variety of disease systems has shown that common species are often the highest quality hosts for pathogens and, in some cases, their vectors. For example, in the eastern United States, the highest quality host for Lyme disease, a common tick-borne disease, is the white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus. The white-footed mouse is the most abundant host in eastern forests, provides a high proportion of successful blood-meals by ticks, and infects the greatest proportion of ticks with the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Why might this be so? We hypothesize that the answer could be immunological — certain immunological traits might predispose some species to be higher quality hosts than others. Preliminary evidence supports this prediction, though much remains to be done to understand patterns in Lyme disease and other disease systems.