Episode 16 DWP Intro to EHD w: Samantha Wisley, Phd

"Trained as a conservation geneticist, my research interests have evolved to incorporate how landscape context influences movement patterns and disease dynamics of terrestrial vertebrates. Broadly, I am interested in how human impacts on the landscape alter ecosystem function. Using a combination of field and laboratory techniques, my lab seeks to understand how host populations maintain reservoirs of pathogens in a changing landscape. Invasive species and vector-borne diseases can be excellent model systems to study, because they are particularly sensitive to these alterations and in turn serve as catalysts for changes in ecosystem function. We use this approach to study disease systems in threatened and endangered species, at the livestock/wildlife interface, and for wildlife diseases that are threats to human health." 

"The Cervidae Health Research Initiative (CHeRI) is a state-funded liaison between the Florida deer farm industry and the University of Florida. The mission of CHeRI is to promote interdisciplinary science, education, and outreach that increase the health and production of captive cervids in a sustainable manner and promotes the health of native wildlife and the ecosystems in which they live. My role as Director is to ensure that the research mission reflects the needs of the producers, that the information produced from the research is widely available to the producers, and that excellent scientists and extension specialists are trained in wildlife health."

https://wec.ifas.ufl.edu/cheri/ 

This podcast is built around real-world experience, collaboration with producers and veterinarians, and nearly three decades of hands-on work across North America. The goal is simple: provide practical insight that helps producers make better decisions for herd health, genetics, and long-term success. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Deer Wizard Podcast conversation shaping the deer industry. I'm your host, Josh and the Deer Wizard, through interviews, advocacy, and industry news. We deliver field-proven insights to help our industry build better.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Deer Wizard Podcast. We have some exciting news. So we are starting a EHD or Epizoatic Hemorrhagic Disease series. And I thought no better person to lead that discussion off than Dr. Samantha Wisely from the Sherry Lab at the University of Florida. Dr. Wisely is a PhD. She runs the Sherry Lab. And it's a dedicated program that's been in place for you know more than a decade now, or around a decade, something like that, that specializes in EHD research, amongst other things, but um it really cut its teeth on that. And so we're so excited. She's agreed to um come on the show and we have a great discussion. We kind of go through the basics and overview of what the Sherry Lab is, her role there, um, some of the people there. And we're gonna be doing regular shows with her on about a quarterly basis. So we'll get regular updates from one of the longest standing EHD labs in the country. I hope you enjoy the conversation. I certainly did. EHD is not uh my specialty area as far as animal health goes, so it's really interesting to get someone that's uh got all the background and and you know scientific data and research to talk about it. I do apologize, some of the auto audio quality uh is a little less than great, um, to put it lightly, uh, but I wanted to make sure that uh we put this this show out for you guys. So I hope you enjoy and without further delay, uh join us and our conversation with Dr. Samantha Wisely.

unknown 2:25

Dr.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Wisely, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Thanks, Josh. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

It's great to have you here. Um, you know, we were we were chatting offline a little bit, and of course we got to see each other uh just recently at the North American Deer Farmers Conference, which was great. And I wanted to, I I I think your I think your whole uh program and initiative of what you guys have been doing uh at the Cherry Lab in Florida is is pretty amazing. And so I want to talk about that story with you. Uh why don't you give the audience just a little bit of background on yourself uh and we'll we'll work up to to present day.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Sure. Yeah. So um I'm a professor at the University of Florida in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. And then I'm also the director of the Cervidé Health Research Initiative. Um, my background is as a molecular ecologist, so um, and field biologist. So I combined going to the field and studying the ecology of animals with the diseases that they may or may not carry, and then oftentimes do some quantitative analysis to supplement that with the overarching goal to figure out how diseases are transmitted between animals and why they're transmitted.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Interesting. Okay, um, so home base for you is Florida at the University of Florida.

unknown 3:51

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Um tell tell us how this um this initiative kicked off originally. How did it come to be?

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Yeah, so so Florida has um more than 400 deer farms and preserves, so we're a strong deer farming state. And in 2012, um nationwide, there was a really large outbreak of epizootic hemorrhagic disease, EHD. Um, it's estimated that Florida deer farmers alone lost about$32 million worth of inventory, so of deer. Um, and I think they wanted to take action. And so the way they did that is several deer farmers got together, they hired a lobbyist, and they went to the Florida legislature and asked them for help. Um, and the way agriculture has received help in the past is through IFIS, the Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences within the University of Florida. So we have many industry university partnerships, whether it be beef cattle or blueberries or strawberries. And so this was just a natural integration of deer farming and the University of Florida. And so we have received$2 million a year from the state legislature every year since 2016 to help deer farmers. So that money that we receive goes right back to help the deer farming industry.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Um I I agree that it does help the deer farm industry. Um, but I think it has much broader impacts across the EHD space because you know, the disease doesn't discriminate whether there's a fence or not, or they're privately managed or publicly held. And so I guess from my perspective, I look at it and I say, you know, what better opportunity for that public-private partnership um and integrated university partnership to work on this really, really it's a nasty disease, right? Like we're and we're we're gonna get into some of that. But there's you know, 34 million just white-tailed deer, let alone you know, other susceptible species that have issues with uh EHD. So I think it has broader impact. I I suspect you you you see that as well. And I I again I think the work that that goes on there has lasting impacts for for um specifically white-tailed deer across the country. Um so you get this, you get this, uh, and and correct me if I'm wrong, it's it's a lion item in the state budget for the university to to have this funding, which is incredible, right? Like that means that everybody has agreed and is committed to this this process of funding. Um how do you go about setting up a a lab like this? Like what what it walk us through that original uh process. I I know it was a a while ago because you're probably one of the longest funded labs that I know of like this, but walk us through that process.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Yeah, thanks. That's it, it is, it has been a really uh exciting ride. Um so as a land grant university, uh we think of this sort of triangle, and the the triangle is extension, teaching, and research. And so, you know, really one of the tenets of that is doing a needs assessment of your stakeholders. So we went and asked deer farmers before we ever even set up anything, what what is it that you need to know? What is it that you need help with? I mean, we knew sort of, you know, the EHD was this problem, but it became very clear very quickly that there were a lot of presumptions about what was killing deer and not a lot of diagnostics or science behind it. People weren't really testing their animals. Their animals would die and they would presume it was EHD. And so that was really the very first thing that we wanted to do is let's figure out exactly what it is that's killing deer, um, uh specifically in Florida. I keep saying in Florida because our funding has to stay in Florida, but you're absolutely right. Every the things that we have done have helped people not only around the country, but I get calls right now, especially all over Europe, because they they are having such a big EHD and blue tongue problem that's really emerging there. So um, so yeah, so we the first thing we did is we set up this diagnostic workflow. Um, I hired a wildlife extension veterinarian, and thank goodness he's still here today. That's Dr. Juan Campos. Um, he is an amazing deer vet. And um our diagnostic workflow works that we have a deer hotline, so our deer farmers call us when they have a dead animal. We send a dedicated necropsy crew out to that person's farm. They collect all the samples that they have, they look at the gross pathology. If Dr. Campos isn't there, he's on a video call with them looking at the animal while they're necropsying it. We take all of those tissues back to the lab and we run a diagnostic workflow that typically goes between three and five laboratories. Um, we return a diagnosis of hemorrhagic disease or not within 48 hours of taking those samples. So we test for EHDV and blue tongue virus immediately. And one of the first things we found is that while there is a lot of EHDV and it is absolutely the number one killer of farm deer in Florida, there were a lot of other things killing people's deer. And so that was like really low-hanging fruit to help people sort of figure out some of the more easily solvable um things that were killing their animals. And then really tackling the incredibly difficult process of keeping animals safe from EHDV, because I think as everybody knows, it's not one thing that's gonna help save deer, right? It's gonna be this very integrated approach that we can talk about.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah. Um, I I saw when we were out at the Nadifa conference, uh, I'm sidebarring a little bit. Um, I saw there was uh two young ladies with you. I'm assuming they they work in the lab. Um tell us how that um, you know, because you're working through the university system, are these uh potential PhD candidates? Like what how how does that work? How do you like outside of of Dr. Campos? Um, I suspect you have some student integration as well.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Yeah, yeah. So we are actually an academic appropriation. So a lot of the work we do involves students. Um let's see if I can remember the statistic. We have graded 53 students, so these could be undergraduate and then 23 interns. And so the interns are almost always those necropsy technicians. And what I think is so cool about that is that is now like 75 people in Florida who know the right, they know what it is, they know what it's about. And I think just from getting a greater understanding and not demonizing it as a lot of people want to do, it's been a really great tool to help that sort of understanding about it. But then just on a level of professional development, these interns go on to veterinary school or graduate school. Um, we have um some of veterinarians graduated, they have gone on to um Squiddis, the Southeastern Cooperative Disease Lab. So again, just sort of disseminating people that that don't have quite have a more optimistic view uh or broad view of what deer farming is, which to me is really important.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yeah, that's amazing. You know, you like for me, I'm well outside of the university system. But when I when I see minds being developed around, you know, and having the opportunity to experience something like the program that that you have, um it it's it's just a good feeling for me anyway, knowing that those people are are developing skills all while um becoming you know professionally developed. And and I I suspect that experience really can can uh drive their careers in in such a productive way outside of things that we could ever even think of. And because there's so many, like I I did not like you you mentioned Europe, right? I I didn't know that Europe had EHD, right? I thought it was a I thought it was a uh you know a North American disease, right? And so um, you know, we get to we get to learn these things, and like it's cool that it's cool that uh you know people are calling you and asking you because you you probably have the largest body of work, so which is incredible. Um okay, so the lab set up. I I'm trying to create this mental timeline in my my head, right? So the lab setup, um, you start doing the diagnostics, you start compiling data, right? And and what do you what do you find? What do you see? What pops out to you? Where's that aha moment?

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Yeah, yeah. Um I think really um not understanding what a large player that blue tongue virus has been, you know, it presents very, very similarly to episode hemorrhagic disease. And so I would say, you know, of the when when we see hemorrhagic disease kill an animal, I would say about maybe one-third of the time it's blue tongue virus and two-thirds of the time it's EHDV. And then there's this other factor that that we discovered in this diagnostic pipeline. So we have two amazing virologists, Dr. Lednitsky and Dr. Subramanium. One is in the College of Public Health, the other is in the College of Veterinary Medicine. So they come from this different background than sort of the general wildlife background we have. And so they use their amazing skills to grow, to culture viruses and then whole genome sequences. And what I'm finding is that this hemorrhages syndrome, I'm gonna call it, is really complicated. It's oftentimes a co-infection with EHDV, but then we discovered nine additional orbiviruses, which are the same viruses as EHDV and blue tongue, that are often found in association with EHDV. And so this could be a much more complicated picture than we imagine because a lot of times animals are resistant to maybe EHDV, but what if they now have a coinfection with another Orby virus? Maybe that's what is the difference between an animal just having it and being asymptomatic, which we see all the time, and an animal getting sick and having hyper-acute hemorrhagic disease and dying within, you know, overnight, which we often see. And so that's been really exciting to sort of think about gosh, this may the what we think of as one virus, maybe this sort of constellation of viruses, and it would radically change protect animals against it, but also um treat animals that have it as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

All right. We're gonna start with uh basic. What is EHD?

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Yeah. So um epizoatic hemorrhagic epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus is a virus in the family orbiviruses. There's lots of different orbiviruses that that cause sicknesses in in lots of animals. So um um African horse sickness is an orbivirus. There's uh blue tongue virus, is another orbivirus. And so um this virus is vector born, meaning that it is carried by an arthropod, and the arthropod, the insect that carries it, is a midge. People call them noceums, people can call them sand firm. They're in the genus Coolacoides, and they're teensy tiny. It's much, much, much smaller than mosquitoes. Okay, and they're blood sucking. And so you have an infected cool coides that infects a deer and it transmits that virus to the deer, and that deer starts incubating that virus and becomes sick and oftentimes dies. Um, and so in uninfected midges can can burn an infected deer and then transmit it. So once you have it on your farm, that's why we often see outbreaks rather than just single one-offs, because you get this cycle of virus being transmitted. The virus itself um attacks um um cells all throughout the body, and so that's what causes this hemorrhagic disease. So, really, I it I mean, people call it the Ebola of deer. The animal kind of liquefies from the inside out, and it's a terrible, terrible disease. Um and so um, yeah, it is it's endemic to the United States. It is worldwide, we see it all over the world. Same with blue tongue virus, we see it all over the world, and there's different serotypes. And by serotype, I mean it it's a slightly different strain. And so in the United States, we have three strains. We have EHDV1, EHDV2, and EHDV6. EHDV2 is the most common, followed by EHDV6. And then at least in Florida, maybe every three years or so, we get an uptick in EHDV1. And each one of those, if we're if uh when we talk about vaccines, each one of those requires a different vaccine target to keep your safe from that particular serotype.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Okay. So now that we know what EHD is, um, I want to hop back to the to the lab. So you start compiling this data. I asked you about the the aha moment. And what do you do with the information? Like how does like you compile it, but like do you distribute it? How how do how do people um that manage deer, um, whether that be public or privately, like what do they do with that data?

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Yeah. So as soon as we had a handle on what was really impacting animals and that the number one cause of death was EHDV, even with all these other circulating viruses, still, EHDV is if we could get a vaccine for that, we knew that we could really decrease mortality in deer. And we toyed around with manufacturing vaccine, but we very, you know, we sort of looked across the vaccine landscape. And at the time, we realized that there were vaccines, people developing vaccines, there was already a vaccine on the market, the Newport vaccine. And so we took a step back. We didn't we didn't really want to invest money to compete with other people, especially companies. Um, but what we decided we would do is provide information to any of those companies so that they could develop vaccines. And we also tested ones that were on the market to make sure that they were efficacious. The last thing I like seeing is bunk products being peddled on the market that don't work for deer farmers. Um, and so we worked with Kansas State University, they had one that was coming up. We started working with MedGene, they had one that was coming up. And what we would do is we would hold genome sequence all of the EHDVs that we got. So whether it was EHDV2 or EHDV6, in order to make a vaccine, you want the virus that's circulating in your population and the vaccine that's being produced to match exactly. And you can't know that unless you have the genome sequence. And so we've we gave that information to you know anyone who would take it. It's publicly available. MedGene is the one that developed the license first, and so um we have continued to work with them. Every year we feed them EHDV2 and EHDV6 sequences to make sure that the product that they're producing still looks like what's circulating in deer. Um, so so that was sort of the route we took. Um we did efficacy studies of um all of these vaccines, and the medgene vaccine reduced mortality significantly in our Florida deer farms. Um they have data that shows that, but we also have independent data from theirs that also shows that as well. I would say, sort of, the next step after that that we needed to develop, you know, we saw some farms where the vaccine wasn't working. And so we really wanted to dig in why that was. And in most cases, it turns out that our deer farmers were not. Use vaccine as the manufacturer told them to, right? So, for you know, a lot of people just wanted to give one dose of the vaccine. And at least the first time around, you have to give them two doses. The animals won't mount an immune response. So that was just kind of simple education, right? Like, you know, how how do we really? So we have infographics and seminars that we do where we really, you know, if you're gonna vaccinate your animals, do it right. If you're gonna spend that money, make sure that you're doing it properly.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Gotcha. Um, you touched on the the seminars. I've excuse me, my I I apologize if you're listening, my throat's killing me today, and I keep hacking. I'm trying to keep it off air, but um I've I've sat uh in quite a few of your seminars, and you know, there's it's it's heavy on knowledge, right? And you do a great job at um we'll call I'll call it dumbing it down for for people like me, so I can understand. Uh, because there's a lot of technicalities, and you know, there's these unknowns, you know, people hear, you know, genomic sequencing and and viruses, and they're just like, okay, I'm just a I'm just a farmer, right? Like, tell me what to do. But um that's been kind of a core component of the of the cherry initiative, hasn't it? It's been that that education side of things where you know it's it's all great to do research, but if you're not able to share that with people, well what good is it, right? It's sitting in some uh you know, bin silo somewhere that nobody's gonna read. So can you talk about um the the education side a little bit of of what you do?

SPEAKER_02 23:39

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for teeing that up because you're absolutely right. And for me, it's the absolute most fun part of my job. So yeah, so so to sort of continue with the story of how land grant university systems work, right? We do this needs assessment, we figure out the research, the real science that we need to do to help that need, but then the final leg of that is the extension working. Once we have a solution, translating that science-based solution so that deer farmers or anyone who who um who works in extension can use that. So our stakeholders, in this case, deer farmers, can use that information. So, yeah, so we hold websites, we hold seminars, we do websites, we have um information that we distribute. Um of the most reasons that we've had are um we always love doing a fawning um demonstration or workshop. So, and that's Dr. Juan Campos. So what are the best practices for really making your fawns robust and getting them through the suckling process, right? Um, we've been toying with the idea with doing a semen quality um seminar. We've had some deer farmers that have had problems with keeping semen viable or really, you know, being able to see what is really good semen before they they put it into their animals. So so, really again, listening to our our deer farmers and then really trying to figure out what we can do to answer the questions that they have.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Yeah, I love that. Um I'm curious because this this year appeared, at least from my information sources, to be publicly one of the worst years for EHD and probably Blue Tongue across the country, at least in North America. Um, you know, just the you know, my sphere of of people that I engage with regularly. Um, like it was just like mass casualties everywhere. And we saw that within the wildlife community as well. Um, are you starting to see uh an uptick in inquiries to you outside of Europe, right? Um where wildlife agencies are reaching out and saying, hey, like we we have this issue, like it's our responsibility to manage these herds. Um, what what what are some insights that you can provide to us? Are you seeing that? Did you see that this past year?

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Yeah, sure. I mean um it it's been yeah, devastating. So the reindeer community has been very interested. They've been really impacted. And in past they haven't, right? They're in the northern part of the 48 states, um at least in the continental US. You know, there's a lot in Canada. Cattle there, it didn't kill the animals outright, but it caused a ton of actions. And so, you know, these animals, their their cattle would get really high fevers um at the late stages of their pregnancy, and so they were aborting. Of course, they've had, you know, um they've they've had EHDV in blue tongue uh like crazy. Um in terms of agencies, um, beginning about, I guess, three years ago, um the USDA is really starting to rethink how they deal with blue tongue virus. You know, it's a reportable disease for them, particularly. Um, it can impact cattle outside out of the US. Um I reached out to Cherry really wanting to to better understand how to a more uh a nationwide picture of so um we've been in discussions with them um gosh probably for three years now about I don't want to say deregulate because it'll all there'll always be some regulation. Some of that is not USDA, some of that is is exporters, but really thinking about it as a pathogen that quite so many regulatory restrictions on it and really de-escalate some of those those restrictions.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Um there's lots more that I I want to cover, um but I I'd like to do it kind of methodically and um for for future shows. And so give us a just a give us a high-level view of what Sherry has going on um today uh that you guys are are are working on.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

Yeah, sure. So um I think on the vaccination front, we have a good handle on how we move forward with future vaccines and sort of what are the future vaccines we want to do. And and again, we are not gonna get into vaccine production, but really waiting for other manufacturers like MedGene, like K-State to come online. So we've been feeding them other viruses of importance. So things like deer pox virus, which um I think certainly in Florida, but we're also starting to see nationwide is um something that impacts uh deer more than people acknowledge. And when I say acknowledge, not that they're hiding it, but it it it manifests in a very different way than EHDV. So that's one thing that we're really investigating. With EHDV too, we also know that that vaccination alone is not going to completely protect your farm. It is a very complicated disease. It happens during fawning season, and you know, you can't vaccinate baby fawns, right? That's just really hard. And so, how do we keep those those really vulnerable animals in our farm safe? And that's gonna be midge management, right? Pest management. And we have an absolutely fabulous entomologist who's part of the Serve Day Health Research Initiative, Cherry. Um, and that's Dr. Nathan Briquette Kadena. He comes from the Florida Medical Entomology Lab. He is a world-renowned entomologist who happens to love studying midges, and so he's been working with his postdoc, Dr. Kristen Slawyer, and a host of other graduate students that have just done excellent work. To really think about midge ecology, right? We just don't know anything about them. There are 52 midge species in Florida, there's 150 of them in the United States. We needed to even figure out like which ones are carrying EHDV, right? So once we did that, understanding their behavior, like these midges have different behaviors, each species. And I take much of the story away because this is a great story, but it turns out like they're on farms like maybe four hours a day. The rest of the time they're hanging out up in trees. And so when we mist or fog for midges, we have to sort of rethink about how we do it and when we do it, so we're not just wasting time and money, right? So that's something that we're actively working on right now. And I think some really cool ideas about how farmers' money and really populations. So that's one really exciting avenue that that I'm really looking forward to to move forward. So we're still in that research phase right now, right? We don't we don't have any solid um advice to give farmers, but I bet you we will um next year at Nadifa, I bet you we'll have some good stuff to tell farmers. We have also our farmers really want to know more about nutrition. Um and you know, rather than just stuffing our deer full of protein, which can be super expensive, and half the time they're just pooping it out, right? So what so so what can we do to really maximize growth and save our deer farmers some money? That's really what our farmers wanted to know. And so again, we have a great nutritionist. He's a small um ungulate nutritionist. Um, his name is Dr. DeWalker Vias here at the University of Florida in the animal sciences department. And he is a huge advocate for forages, like putting natural forages back into our deer, not just having a pelleted diet. And so we're again, we're in the science phase right now. We're really looking at different, we're feeding deer different diets, we're measuring what goes into the deer, we're measuring what comes out of the deer, and seeing how much protein is just pooped out, right? As opposed to being incorporated into making big deer and making big antlers. And so that one's gonna be two or three years down the line. And I should just say that all of the research that we do is in collaboration with our deer farmers. All of our research happens on deer farms, and I just cannot thank our deer farmers enough for trusting us to go onto their farms and trusting us to do this research. It is our partnership means everything to me and to all of our scientists and students.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Well, I love that. Um I and I I love the investment of uh time and energy um in collaboration with uh the people that keep these animals alive, want to keep them alive, right? And and see them, see them do well. Um Thank you so much for coming on today. It's it's been a pleasure, and I I'd like to I'd like to just extend the offer as I've done before, just to have some regular updates, um, because I I think this work's important and I want to continue to shine a light on it for for everyone to be able to take advantage of it. Um there's again, there's no point in doing the work and then you know stuff it in a in a computer silo somewhere where people can't take advantage of that. So, first of all, thank you for that. And um we look forward to having you back on.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Likewise, I look forward to being back.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Thank you so much. And with that, stay tuned for another episode of the Deer Wizard Podcast.