Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU | G19AS00096

Opportunity Information: Apply for G19AS00096

The Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number G19AS00096) is a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) award administered through the Department of the Interior, designed to support applied research on wildlife disease modeling. The work is led by the USGS National Wildlife Health Center and is aimed specifically at partnering with an eligible CESU member that can demonstrate strong capability in spatial statistics and spatiotemporal statistical modeling. The central management problem behind the award is that wildlife disease mitigation options are often limited, and vaccination is one of the few interventions that could realistically reduce disease impacts at meaningful scales. In this case, the disease of concern is sylvatic plague affecting prairie dog colonies, and the intervention tool is an oral sylvatic plague vaccine (SPV) delivered via bait.

The core purpose of the project is to use and further evaluate spatially explicit, data-driven models that USGS has already developed to simulate prairie dog, flea, and plague dynamics under different management and environmental scenarios. These models have been parameterized using both SPV field trials and controlled laboratory trials conducted at the National Wildlife Health Center. The modeling framework is intended to help agencies plan plague control programs under increasingly variable and erratic weather patterns, where climate can influence flea populations and, in turn, transmission risk. In practical terms, the funded work is meant to turn existing trial results and mechanistic assumptions into clear predictions that managers can use when deciding how, where, and how intensively to vaccinate, and whether vaccination should be paired with other tactics like insecticide dusting.

A major emphasis of the opportunity is comparing vaccination strategies and answering concrete operational questions. Examples highlighted in the announcement include determining what fraction of prairie dogs in a colony must be vaccinated for the population to persist when plague pressure is ongoing, and whether "vaccination firewalls" (rings or barriers of vaccinated colonies or areas around infected towns) can slow or stop spatial spread. The work also seeks to clarify whether smaller colonies benefit less from SPV, which matters for prioritizing limited resources, and whether combining vaccination with flea control (for example, dusting burrows with insecticides) changes what an optimal management strategy looks like. Beyond immediate colony survival, the opportunity also points to broader ecological questions, such as the predicted long-term effects of sustained vaccination strategies on small mammal communities, and how recommended strategies might shift under drought conditions.

Technically, the described model simulates prairie dogs transitioning from susceptible to infected through multiple encounter pathways: contact with infected prairie dogs, bites from infected fleas, or exposure to infectious carcasses. These pathways are represented using multinomial probabilities, with parameters grounded in the lab and field datasets. The flea component is explicitly structured into four stages of plague exposure: susceptible, early phase, latent phase, and late phase. That structure is important because it allows the model to test competing ideas in the scientific literature about how strongly early phase versus late phase flea transmission contributes to overall plague dynamics (the announcement cites Lorange et al. 2005 and Eisen et al. 2006 as part of this debate). The model also accounts for vaccination status by including parameters that represent whether an individual prairie dog consumed a vaccine bait (based on field-trial bait uptake) and the probability that the vaccine actually provides protection (based on laboratory efficacy estimates). On top of that, flea reproduction and mortality can be linked to climate variables like temperature and humidity, enabling scenario-based predictions about how climate variability and climate change could alter transmission intensity and outbreak frequency.

Another stated component of the work is sensitivity analysis and evaluation of uncertainty. USGS indicates it is already exploring how uncertain parameters influence model outcomes, and the project is positioned to help quantify which assumptions or parameters most affect predictions. This kind of analysis is directly relevant to management because it can reveal whether decisions are robust (for example, whether a recommended vaccination coverage threshold holds across plausible parameter ranges) or whether additional data collection would significantly improve confidence in model-based guidance.

From an administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary funding opportunity using a cooperative agreement mechanism, meaning the agency typically expects substantial involvement or collaboration during the project rather than a purely hands-off grant. The activity category is Science and Technology and other Research and Development, and the CFDA number listed is 15.808. The anticipated award information in the posting indicates one expected award with an award ceiling of $47,000. The opportunity was created on July 9, 2019, with an original closing date of July 26, 2019. Eligibility is limited to CESU partners (with additional eligibility details referenced in the full announcement), and the project is specifically tailored to applicants who can contribute rigorous spatial and spatiotemporal modeling expertise to evaluate SPV deployment strategies and related plague mitigation approaches under realistic ecological and climatic conditions.

• The Department of the Interior, U. S. Geological Survey in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Rocky Mountain CESU" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.808.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jul 09, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 26, 2019. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $47,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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