Division of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Boyd Orr Centre for Population and Ecosystem Health, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK.
Mol Ecol. 2010 Sep;19(17):3515-31. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2010.04679.x. Epub 2010 Jul 7.
The spread of parasites is inherently a spatial process often embedded in physically complex landscapes. It is therefore not surprising that infectious disease researchers are increasingly taking a landscape genetics perspective to elucidate mechanisms underlying basic ecological processes driving infectious disease dynamics and to understand the linkage between spatially dependent population processes and the geographic distribution of genetic variation within both hosts and parasites. The increasing availability of genetic information on hosts and parasites when coupled to their ecological interactions can lead to insights for predicting patterns of disease emergence, spread and control. Here, we review research progress in this area based on four different motivations for the application of landscape genetics approaches: (i) assessing the spatial organization of genetic variation in parasites as a function of environmental variability, (ii) using host population genetic structure as a means to parameterize ecological dynamics that indirectly influence parasite populations, for example, gene flow and movement pathways across heterogeneous landscapes and the concurrent transport of infectious agents, (iii) elucidating the temporal and spatial scales of disease processes and (iv) reconstructing and understanding infectious disease invasion. Throughout this review, we emphasize that landscape genetic principles are relevant to infection dynamics across a range of scales from within host dynamics to global geographic patterns and that they can also be applied to unconventional 'landscapes' such as heterogeneous contact networks underlying the spread of human and livestock diseases. We conclude by discussing some general considerations and problems for inferring epidemiological processes from genetic data and try to identify possible future directions and applications for this rapidly expanding field.
寄生虫的传播本质上是一个空间过程，通常嵌入在物理复杂的景观中。因此，传染病研究人员越来越多地从景观遗传学的角度来阐明驱动传染病动态的基本生态过程的机制，并理解依赖于空间的种群过程与宿主和寄生虫内遗传变异的地理分布之间的联系，这并不奇怪。当宿主和寄生虫的遗传信息越来越多时，结合它们的生态相互作用，可以为预测疾病的出现、传播和控制模式提供见解。在这里，我们基于应用景观遗传学方法的四个不同动机综述了该领域的研究进展：（i）评估寄生虫遗传变异的空间组织作为环境变异性的函数，（ii）利用宿主种群遗传结构作为参数化生态动态的一种手段，这些生态动态间接影响寄生虫种群，例如基因流和穿过异质景观的运动途径以及传染性病原体的同时运输，（iii）阐明疾病过程的时间和空间尺度，以及（iv）重建和理解传染病的入侵。在整篇综述中，我们强调景观遗传学原理与从宿主动力学到全球地理模式的一系列范围内的感染动态相关，并且它们也可以应用于非常规的“景观”，例如人类和牲畜疾病传播所基于的异质接触网络。最后，我们讨论了从遗传数据推断流行病学过程的一些一般考虑因素和问题，并试图确定这个快速发展领域的可能未来方向和应用。
