How does environmental biodiversity affect wildlife health? The WILD HEALTH project aims to understand how environmental diversity affects host microbiota and health.
The study species are the bank vole Myodes glareolus and the moose Alces alces, which are sampled for microbiota and parasites in different types of boreal forests. Since some of these parasites are transmissible to humans, we also study how biodiversity in forests affects human health, by altering pathogen presence and prevalence in the animal host.
Simultaneously, forest inventory and soil quality sampling allow us to assess the quality of the living environment of these animals in boreal forest of varying management.
The research project consortium comprises researchers, field engineers, and lab technicians from Finland (University of Oulu, University of Jyväskylä; coordinator: Phillip Watts), Sweden (SLU), and the USA (Alaska, University of Anchorage.
In Sweden, the principal investigators of the project are Frauke Ecke and Navinder Singh. Claire Cayol is the postdoctoral researcher implementing the project in Sweden.
Moose. Photo: Hanna Knutsson
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