In June, Virginia Tech Assistant Professor Luis Escobar led a team of students into the Andes Mountains and lowlands of Colombia to understand how vampire bats can help predict and prevent the next big epidemic.
Escobar is an expert in assessing how diseases respond to climate and landscape change in the College of Natural Resources and Environment’s Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation. With a $358,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), his latest project examines how vampire bats carrying the rabies virus can help scientists forecast areas where wildlife virus transmission might occur in the coming years.
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Source: Phys.org