Crawfish &                  White Spot Syndrome Virus

Background

After moving to Louisiana, I started looking for projects with a local impact, and discovered white spot syndrome in crayfish crawfish. White spot syndrome virus (WSSV) is able to infect pretty much any crustacean, and has become an important agricultural problem in the crawfish industry here. Farms affected by this virus can suffer massive losses of their crawfish, and not much is yet known about how WSSV behaves in this host in Louisiana. Various stressors such as low oxygen levels or high temperatures seem to induce virus-associated mortality. 

My interest is in what factors contribute to the persistence of WSSV in a particular farm, and what affects the replication of the virus in the host. This is similar to our mosquito project in that we are investigating the effects of herbicides and other chemicals used in rice co-culture on virus replication in the crawfish.