Spatial interactions between livestock and their environment as a determinant of parasitic disease risk.

Parasites cause massive losses to the sheep industry worldwide and have major detrimental effects

on the welfare of animals. Overuse of drugs has led to resistance in a number of economically-
important parasites, and a more sustainable approach of only treating highly infected individuals is

advocated. However, assessing infection from laboratory-based measurements such as faecal egg

counts is costly. This project will develop the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) collars and

accelerometers to monitor sheep behaviour, in order to understand how space use is related to risk

of infection, how space use changes with increased parasite load, and how parasite load affects

movement and the ways in which individual sheep interact with one another. Finally, you will design

and carry out controlled field experiments to test the effects of anti-parasite drugs on these

parameters, to determine whether the effects of parasite load on behaviour can be reversed.

The project will focus on gastrointestinal nematodes such as Teladorsagia circumcincta, the liver fluke

(whose snail intermediate host prefers wet environments), and ticks (which prefer edge habitat and

rough grazing, and carry several important diseases). There will be large components of both fieldwork

and data analysis, with significant support from all three supervisors. Pilot projects will build on

existing studies relating habitat use to tick and nematode risk, and on use of GPS data in animal

behaviour studies.

You will gain training in a wide range of skills, including assessment of welfare indicators and parasite

load, sampling microhabitats to effectively map at-risk areas in fields, field observations of behaviour

to corroborate GPS data, data analysis to extract potential behavioural indicators from GPS coordinate

data, and statistical analysis to explore how parasite load is associated with space use and movement.

There is little utilisation of behavioural assays in livestock husbandry to assess infection and its

consequences, despite the numerous effects parasites have on animal behaviour in a range of species.

This project will break new ground by harnessing technology to monitor behaviour and assess the

interaction between behaviour and parasite infection. A major long-term goal of the project is to

develop behavioural indicators for infection risk and parasite load which can be utilised in real-world

settings.