Viral eco-evolutionary dynamics of wild and domestic pollinators under global change (VOODOO)

Pollinators underpin ecosystem and human health, but face multiple threats from global change. Anthropogenic modification of landscape floral resources by land-use and alien species may magnify disease risk by producing nutritional stress in pollinators or re-organising their abundance and community interactions. Emerging infectious diseases (e.g. RNA viruses) often arise through high mutation rates and frequent novel pathogen shifts across species barriers. Close phylogenetic relatives of the original host are typically more susceptible, but viral adaptation can enable replication in novel hosts and following spillback altered virulence in the original host due to the genetic changes. However, why pathogens jump between some species, but not others, and the role of global change in driving host shifts remains a substantial knowledge gap. Recent evidence points to potential viral coinfection across a spectrum of flower-visiting insects; however, their roles in causing disease and the potential for emergent pandemic viruses that drive losses of both managed and wild pollinators is poorly understood. VOODOO aims to discover how the eco-epidemiological dynamics of plant-pollinator-virus interactions from individual to community levels are modulated by changes to the availability and quality of nutritional (floral) resources driven by global change pressures (conventional intensive agriculture, alien plant species, and urbanisation). We will quantify tripartite networks in different landscape contexts through ecological sampling, high-resolution molecular analysis (NGS) and network and eco-epidemiological models to reveal pollinator disease hubs and dynamics across organisms and habitats. We will couple this with laboratory selection experiments testing viral fitness and adaptation in known and cryptic host species under nutritional stress treatments calibrated to field-realistic levels. We will engage with diverse societal actors to integrate complementary knowledge on decision-making, risk management and implementation to ensure sustainable societal outcomes.