WCS scientist awarded US National Science Foundation fellowship

Dr. Charles C.Y. Xu has joined the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Health Program as a postdoctoral scientist funded by a prestigious 3-year fellowship from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

Accordingly, the research proposal, titled “Understanding the ecological drivers and genomic mechanisms of wildlife viral emergence caused by deforestation in Cambodia,” was funded through the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology program.
This fellowship fosters independence of early-career researchers by enabling them to pursue their own scientific investigations and collaborations. Approximately 46 fellowships are awarded nationally in this highly competitive area each year.

Said Dr. Sarah Olson, WCS Director of Health Research: “We are thrilled to welcome Xu, an NSF-funded Fellow, to WCS. As a science- driven global conservation organization, his research, on effects of degraded ecosystems on wildlife and pathogens, is exceptionally timely and needed to guide both local conservation and global pandemic prevention efforts.”
With this fellowship, Xu aims to study how land-use change in Cambodia affects wildlife viral diversity and evolution by following up on previous work, co-led by WCS’s Dr. Mathieu Pruvot and the Institut Pasteur du Cambodge under the EU-Funded Laos Cambodia One Health Network (LACANET Project).

When a forest is cut down to make way for agriculture, animal communities face abrupt upheaval. Among other impacts, rodent communities switch from stable low-density forest species to seasonally fluctuating species more often found near humans, which could then act as bridges to humans and other domestic animals for pathogens that once remained deep in the forest.

The study, titled “Small Mammals at the Edge of Deforestation in Cambodia: Transient Community Dynamics and Potential Pathways to Pathogen Emergence,” was published in the Jan. 19, 2024, issue of the journal One Earth.
“As society grapples with the intertwined challenges of land-use change, biodiversity loss, and emerging infectious diseases, understanding these dynamics becomes crucial,” Pruvot said.

The study pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as an illustration of the urgent need to understand factors and mechanisms involved in the emergence of new pathogens.

Despite abundant discussion and conceptualization of how deforestation and land-use change influence zoonotic diseases emergence and spread, relatively little empirical evidence is available to identify specific pathways and even less have attempted to understand from a genomic perspective.

Xu’s proposed research will help address this research gap by uncovering the potential evolutionary mechanisms linking deforestation and pathogen emergence, which may ultimately be used to inform policy decisions and highlight the human health benefits of protecting nature.

Using cutting-edge molecular and bioinformatic tools, Xu will revisit thousands of samples collected in this study to comprehensively map the wildlife viral communities at different stages of deforestation.

He will do this by sequencing viral genomes to better understand how wildlife viruses are evolving in response to deforestation and predict the potential for human spillovers.

Xu will lead this international research in collaboration with Olson, Pruvot, Dr. Alex Greenwood (Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research), and Dr. Veasna Duong (Institut Pasteur du Cambodge).

In addition, Xu plans to broaden the impact of his research by collaborating with the WCS Education Department based at the Bronx Zoo to develop online educational modules as well as through conducting science communication outreach locally within Cambodia.