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Linking Disease and Tropical Forest Destruction

Dr. Gillespie is an Advanced Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at Emory University

Flu, West Nile virus, Lyme disease, anthrax, and leptospirosis are just a few of the common diseases that keep public health officials on the alert for outbreaks What is unique about these diseases are that they are transmitted from animals to humans, a type of disease called zoonotic. Understanding how pathogens are transmitted through animal populations is one critical link in developing control strategies to manage these diseases.

The specialized field of primate disease ecology began around 1999 when scientists linked the HIV/AIDS pandemic to SIV-1 from chimpanzees. Disease ecologists discovered that as humans increased their activity in the forests, they subsequently increased their chances of not only acquiring but also transmitting viral, bacterial, fungal, and parasitic pathogens to wild primates, their close relatives.

One of the world's leading primate disease ecologists, Dr. Thomas Gillespie, co-founded the Kibale Ecohealth project in 2004 to examine the increased risks of pathogen exchange resulting from manmade disturbances to tropical forests. While ecologists have known that deforestation is detrimental to many species, Dr. Gillespie's doctoral work as an EPA STAR fellow (2001-2004) was the first to link forest fragmentation with increased primate disease. Dr. Gillespie compared patterns of gastrointestinal parasite infection and infection risk among many monkey species inhabiting undisturbed forest, selectively logged forest, and a series of forest fragments in and around Kibale National Park in Uganda. His results suggested that the amounts and timing of gastrointestinal infections were affected by the degree and nature of the manmade changes to the forest. Dr. Gillespie’s research was highlighted in Science (2004 305:1230).

In order to protect the health of both humans and non-human primates, the Morris Animal Foundation continues to fund the Kibale Ecohealth project and Dr. Gillespie's exploration of zoonotic disease transmission. His efforts focus on nine communities near Kibale National Park in western Uganda, and use a combination of epidemiology, molecular ecology, behavioral ecology, social and clinical surveys, and spatially explicit modeling. Dr. Gillespie is examining whether these Uganda-based findings also apply to other areas through comparative studies of such interactions in Congo, Gabon, Rwanda, Senegal, and Tanzania.

Additionally, Dr. Gillespie is integrating wildlife disease surveillance with public health surveys to better understand the ecology and natural distribution of monkeypox virus, an emerging pathogen that causes up to 10 percent human deaths among infected individuals. Since the risk of emerging pox viruses in wildlife populations remains largely unknown, Dr. Gillespie collaborates with the Poxvirus Program at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to test small mammals in Uganda for exposure to monkeypox virus.

For more information contact Dr. Gillespie at thomas.gillespie@emory.edu
or his web site: http://vetmed.illinois.edu/ecohealth/trghomeEmory.html

For information about Dr. Gillespie’s STAR Fellowship see: http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/display.abstractDetail/abstract/6696/report/0

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