Objective
Living in societies amplifies the risk of getting sick, as pathogens can easily spread along the dense social interaction networks of the hosts. Sanitary care and the organisational structure of societies are expected to limit the risk of epidemics. Yet, how the defences of the individual group members scale-up, combine and synergise towards society-level protection, is poorly understood, as the majority of societies can only be studied via correlational and modeling approaches. Insect societies provide a powerful system for experimental studies, as whole societies are accessible for surveillance and manipulative approaches. We can monitor every behavioural interaction between all members, determine their effects on colony-wide disease spread and replicate experiments arbitrarily. The fitness effects of collective disease defences can be quantified, as they result in a single fitness measure of colony productivity. This is because all members of a social insect colony form a reproductive entity composed of the reproductive queens and males and their sterile workers. I will use an ant host–fungal pathogen system to find out how initial infection develops into an epidemic, and, in turn, how colony-level defence emerges from the interactions between its members. To infer effect from cause, I will not only observe the colony after initial infection of a subset of colony members, but also manipulate the sanitary behaviours and spatiotemporal interaction of host individuals. To this end, I will engineer an automatised platform, following the principles of lab-on-a-chip techniques, to individually target and manipulate colony members, and to quantify their behaviours. Fitness effects will be read out by the quantity and quality of reproductive offspring in the next generation. Such a long-term whole-colony approach is required for understanding the evolution of social immunity, that is, how disease shapes society and how society shapes disease.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health
- engineering and technology other engineering and technologies microtechnology lab on a chip
- medical and health sciences health sciences infectious diseases
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology mycology
- natural sciences biological sciences zoology entomology
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2017-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
3400 Klosterneuburg
Austria
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.