Quantifying the impact of woodland restoration on rodent communities and their pathogens

This project will investigate how woodland restoration affects rodent communities and their viruses by combining fieldwork, high resolution mapping of rodent contact networks, and next generation sequencing of virus communities. Field sites will be chosen from an existing network of woodland creation sites (e.g. from the WrEN and TreE_PlaNat projects) to examine how rodent communities and infections differ between woodlands of different ages and degree of connectivity to other broadleaf forests in the landscape. The aim of this study is to improve our understanding of how reforestation and woodland creation can be leveraged to improve wildlife health and reduce risk of zoonotic disease in human populations.