When to vaccinate a fluctuating wildlife population: is timing everything?

When to vaccinate a fluctuating wildlife population: is timing everything?

By: Courtney Schreiner    Email:  schr5461@vandals.uidaho.edu

Home Town: Kennewick, Washington    High School: Kennewick High School

Major: Math:Applied-Mathematical Biol
Department: Mathematics
College: College of Science

Investigating how important timing of vaccination is

Hi All!
I am an Undergrad working in Scott Nuismer’s lab. Here in Scott’s lab we use mathematics to investigate disease dynamics and how we can help prevent the further spread of diseases. Recently, I finished a project along with Andrew Basinski, a post doc in Scott’s lab. This project aimed to discover if timing of vaccination matters in wildlife populations. Specifically, does timing matter in populations that drastically change in size throughout the year. This study could be important in implementing vaccination campaigns in applications where vaccines/resources are limited.
Conclusions:
We found through mathematical modeling that timing of vaccination does indeed matter and the optimal time appears to be at the end of the hosts breeding season. This is due to the fact that the probability of vaccinating individuals is highest when the population is biggest. If you vaccinate too early, then susceptible individuals will be introduced into the population and be at risk of infection. Vaccinate too late, and most of the population may have already been infected. Read more in my paper here.

Can timing a vaccination programme help protect wildlife and potentially facilitate pathogen elimination?
Results from @C_Schreiner1326 and @NuismerScott @uidaho show that timing matters for wildlife with fast demography and pathogens with rapid infection https://t.co/zecfmn0N89 pic.twitter.com/1aqX5oPQgH

— Journal of Applied Ecology (@JAppliedEcology) January 6, 2020

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