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Ohio State researchers studying behavior of West Nile virus
KEITH ARNOLD
Special to the Legal News
Published: May 29, 2025
Researchers at The Ohio State University are investigating West Nile virus and the transmission cycles of the insect-borne disease in an effort to determine the best way to limit its spread.
Scientists hope to pin down the process by using mathematical models to analyze how factors such as temperature, light pollution and bird and mosquito abundance affect transmission of the virus, a news release provided.
“Once we have the models in place, we can predict what West Nile virus transmission might look like in a given year,” said the study’s principal investigator Megan Meuti, an Ohio State associate professor of entomology. “And in partnership with local health departments and mosquito control districts, our ultimate goal is to understand what’s driving West Nile virus transmission and use this information to better predict when and where we can direct specific interventions.”
Meuti’s previous research found that the dormancy period of the virus appears to be delayed––or even prevented––by artificial light at night and heat in urban areas, resulting in an extended transmission period later into the fall and a suggestion that urban and rural transmission patterns may differ.
“We know humans tend to get infected in the late summer and early fall, and other studies have shown that birds are infected before then, but we don’t really know where West Nile virus is going in the winter,” Meuti said.
Researchers began collecting mosquitoes and birds last fall with the plan to continuously collect specimens for three years.
Urban collection sites are located in Franklin and Lucas counties, while rural sites are in Union and Ottawa counties, the release noted.
Bird trapping focuses on nine species known to be bitten by the known carriers of the virus, Culex mosquitoes: American robins, mourning doves, northern cardinals, house sparrows, common grackles, European starlings, gray catbirds, Swainson’s thrushes and red-winged blackbirds.
The researchers tagged and released captured birds after collecting blood samples that identified their infection status––never infected, active West Nile virus infection or antibodies indicating they’ve been infected and recovered, the release continued.
This past winter, researchers collected dormant mosquitoes from culverts to determine whether they were already infected with the virus.
The scientists were able to determine what animals they had been biting based on the blood contents in mosquitoes’ stomachs. Researchers then sequenced the virus detected in mosquitoes.
Meuti said data and modeling should enable the team to test their hypotheses about how the transmission process plays out in rural and urban settings.
“If RNA sequences are very similar from fall to spring, that would suggest the virus is staying local and, most likely, the way it’s staying local would be in the overwintering mosquitoes. But if we see differences in sequences from fall to spring, that would be more suggestive that it is a new West Nile virus strain or a slightly different strain coming from migratory birds,” Meuti said.
The project is funded by a $3 million grant from the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease program through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Other Ohio State researchers include Laura Pomeroy, assistant professor of environmental health sciences; Jaqueline Nolting, assistant professor of veterinary preventive medicine; and Andrew Bowman, professor of veterinary preventive medicine.
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