Bat OneHealth research team gathers for annual meeting

Bat OneHealth held its annual meeting in October in Montana’s Tom Miner Basin north of Yellowstone National Park. Led by Raina Plowright of Montana State University and Pete Hudson of Penn State University, forty members of the team--scientists, post-docs, graduated students, and staff--gathered to discuss research results and to strategize across disciplines on this global project.

The research is being carried out among 11 institutions working on four continents (field sites for the work are in hot spots of disease spillover: Ghana, Bangladesh, Australia, and Madagascar). Areas of study reach from the sub-molecular (e.g., understanding how virus genetics and host immunological response impact spillover and can be overridden or enhanced, as the desire may be), to ecological change (e.g., understanding how lack of native forest and available nectar might drive bats into towns for food and hence unnaturally close to people), and everywhere in between.

The team includes immunologists, epidemiologists, ecologists, modelers, social scientists, machine learning experts, remote sensing specialists, field staff, and more.