Hi Reddit! My name is Christine Kreuder Johnson, I am a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of California School of Veterinary Medicine’s One Health Institute. Joining me today is Tierra Smiley Evans, a veterinarian and graduate student in epidemiology at UC Davis who developed the primate sampling technique published recently in PLOS NTDs, “Optimization of a Novel Non-invasive Oral Sampling Technique for Zoonotic Pathogen Surveillance in Nonhuman Primates”, that we will be discussing today. CHRISTINE KREUDER JOHNSON – My research focuses on ecological processes that impact wildlife and public health. I am especially interested in finding new ways to investigate disease in endangered species and identifying One Health solutions for protecting human and animal health. Most recently, I work with a consortium of partners on USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT project to develop global surveillance capabilities to detect infectious disease threats with pandemic potential. We focus on zoonotic viruses that spillover from animals to cause disease in humans and we work at the highest-risk interfaces around the world where new diseases are most likely to emerge. Our published study “Spillover and Pandemic Properties of Zoonotic Viruses with High Host Plasticity” highlights many of the epidemiologic circumstances promoting spillover, amplification, and spread of zoonotic viruses that we are investigating in order to direct interventions aimed at disease prevention. TIERRA SMILEY EVANS – My research focuses on zoonotic disease transmission in human and non-human primate communities in Africa and Asia. I have conducted field research in Uganda, Rwanda, Nepal and Myanmar and I am particularly interested in developing non-invasive diagnostics for wildlife that can enable us to understand disease dynamics in these remote settings. Our recent PLOS NTDS article describes a non-invasive sampling technique that involves distributing a rope for primates to chew on that can be retrieved and screened for pathogens that are present in the mouth. This method provides an alternative approach to anesthetizing wild primates to test for diseases and enables sampling of populations that otherwise would not be able to be sampled. Our methods can be applied to studies examining primates as sources of diseases that could affect humans in remote tropical settings. Our study and its implications for public health is also discussed in a post on the PLOS Student Blog. We are looking forward to answering your questions at 1pm ET today — Ask Us Anything!