Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Gulf Coast Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit

The US Geological Survey is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner to research the dynamics of pathogens in wild bat populations, analyze the potential spillover of these pathogens to other species, and support a national-scale surveillance effort to track bats and coronavirus through the North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat). The larger project will provide an intense wildlife coronavirus surveillance effort conducted in partnership with Federal, State, Tribal, and non-governmental organization partners. Data obtained from coronavirus surveillance in bats and the environment will be used to model potential SARS-CoV-2 spread in bat populations and understand the role of wildlife and the environment in human COVID-19 infection dynamics.  This will inform risk assessments of spillover from and spill-back to human populations and would inform actions to help prevent or minimize recurrence of outbreaks in the future.