Associating wildlife host traits with virus diversity across taxa and environments

Wildlife viruses are a significant and increasing threat to global health. Preventing viral spillover requires identifying which species harbour the most viruses potentially risky viruses. Some studies suggest that species with certain traits and behaviours, such as short lifespans and high sociality, harbour greater virus diversity than others. However, this field is challenged by biases in diagnostic and sampling effort for both viruses and hosts, with accessible hosts and pathogenic viruses likely over-represented. To address these challenges, this project will first examine published virus-host associations using real sampling details from the each publication rather than the commonly-used number of studies to account for sampling effort, comparing how these different corrections affect estimates of virus diversity association with host traits. Then, it will run public metagenomic and transcriptomic data through a virus discovery pipeline to obtain a minimally biased estimate of virus diversity to model by host traits. Third, it will sample rodent communities across a land use gradient to assess how virus diversity and inter-species transmission varies between environments. Together, these three parts will offer a rigorous and detailed assessment of the effects of species traits on their capacity to host and share virus diversity.