Predicting wildlife reservoirs and global vulnerability to zoonotic Flaviviruses

Pranav S. Pandit (), Megan M. Doyle, Katrina M. Smart, Cristin C. W. Young, Gaylen W. Drape and Christine K. Johnson ()
Additional contact information
Pranav S. Pandit: University of California Davis
Megan M. Doyle: University of California Davis
Katrina M. Smart: ENSCO Inc.
Cristin C. W. Young: University of California Davis
Gaylen W. Drape: ENSCO Inc.
Christine K. Johnson: University of California Davis

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Flaviviruses continue to cause globally relevant epidemics and have emerged or re-emerged in regions that were previously unaffected. Factors determining emergence of flaviviruses and continuing circulation in sylvatic cycles are incompletely understood. Here we identify potential sylvatic reservoirs of flaviviruses and characterize the macro-ecological traits common to known wildlife hosts to predict the risk of sylvatic flavivirus transmission among wildlife and identify regions that could be vulnerable to outbreaks. We evaluate variability in wildlife hosts for zoonotic flaviviruses and find that flaviviruses group together in distinct clusters with similar hosts. Models incorporating ecological and climatic variables as well as life history traits shared by flaviviruses predict new host species with similar host characteristics. The combination of vector distribution data with models for flavivirus hosts allows for prediction of global vulnerability to flaviviruses and provides potential targets for disease surveillance in animals and humans.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07896-2 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-07896-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07896-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().