Rodents are a perennial problem to farmers, spoiling feed, damaging infrastructure, and carrying disease. Their role in the transmission of zoonotic diseases, such as leptospirosis and hantaviruses is relatively well- understood, but rodents may also carry a number of non-zoonotic pathogens that are important to livestock industries due to their impacts on economic performance and animal welfare. Pest control is crucial to farm biosecurity; however, the precise role of rodents in most production diseases is unknown. Though often blamed as a source of new infections, it has been suggested that they are more likely to maintain or amplify reservoirs of pathogens already present on farm, and are, therefore, mainly important in carrying over infections between batches of livestock. Pest control currently relies heavily on the blanket use of anticoagulant rodenticides, which are of concern due to environmental toxicity. To counteract this, we can develop pest management strategies that disrupt the most important transmission route between rodents and livestock by precisely targeting controls in time and space. However, this requires a detailed understanding of the interactions between rodent, livestock and pathogen, as well as discovering what is acceptable and practical for use by farmers and pest controllers.
The RodentGate project is a European consortium with partners in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, aiming to address these questions. This studentship will focus on the bacterial transmission dynamics, using cutting-edge genomic techniques to characterise the overlapping bacterial flora of rodents and pigs on contrasting farm types and studying how these populations change over time. An in-depth focus on Salmonella, using whole genome sequencing (WGS), will be combined with a broad exploration of the microbiome using a metagenomic approach, to explore how pathogen sharing between pigs and rodents varies between different bacterial taxa. Bacterial population data, plus detailed data on movements of pigs and farm biosecurity evaluations, will be used to estimate the relative importance of rodent reservoirs compared to introduction and maintenance of bacteria within the pig population. Findings will feed into RodentGate’s modelling activities (led by the University of Antwerp), alongside ecological studies of rodent movements and sociological research into farmer attitudes to alternative pest control strategies, led by other European partners. Opportunities for placements at partner institutes may be available as part of the project.
The WGS studies of Salmonella will also contribute to ongoing research at the UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), where novel classification methods based on WGS, rather than traditional sero- and phage- typing methodologies, are being adopted. As typing methods change, it becomes critical to understand how bacterial strains evolve over time, to investigate questions such as when does a strain become sufficiently different from its parent strain to become classified as a “new” strain using WGS methods; or whether sharing of bacterial strains across host species in a field situation would accelerate strain differentiation. The data collected through this studentship project provides an ideal opportunity to contribute to such questions at the cutting edge of applied epidemiological research.
All applications must include the following information. Applications not containing these documents will not be considered.
• In the first part of the application select the following: Agriculture, Health and Environment Scholarship Reference Number (Ref: VCS FES-01-2021) – included in the personal statement section together with your personal statement as to why you are applying
• a CV including 2 referees *
• a short proposal on how you would address the research topic
• academic qualification certificates/transcripts and IELTs/English Language certificate if you are an international applicant or if English is not your first language or you are from a country where English is not the majority spoken language as defined by the UK Border Agency *
*upload to the qualification section of the application form. Attachments need to be in PDF format
Continue with Facebook
