scholarly journals Chronic infections can shape epidemic exposure: Pathogen co-occurrence networks in the Serengeti lions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas M. Fountain-Jones ◽  
Craig Packer ◽  
Maude Jacquot ◽  
F. Guillaume Blanchet ◽  
Karen Terio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Community Ecology ◽  
Molecular Data ◽  
Competitive Interactions ◽  
Random Structure ◽  
Disease Dynamics ◽  
Wild Populations ◽  
Chronic Infections ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Combine Network ◽  
African Lions

AbstractPathogens are embedded in a complex network of microparasites that can collectively or individually alter disease dynamics and outcomes. Chronic pathogens, for example, can either facilitate or compete with subsequent pathogens thereby exacerbating morbidity and mortality. Pathogen interactions are ubiquitous in nature, but poorly understood, particularly in wild populations. We report here on ten years of serological and molecular data in African lions, leveraging comprehensive demographic and behavioral data to utilize pathogen networks to test if chronic infections shape infection by acute pathogens. We combine network and community ecology approaches to assess broad network structure and characterize associations between pathogens across spatial and temporal scales. We found significant non-random structure in the lion-pathogen co-occurrence network and identified potential facilitative and competitive interactions between acute and chronic pathogens. Our results provide a novel insight for untangling the complex associations underlying pathogen co-occurrence networks.

scholarly journals Targeted re-sequencing reveals the genomic signatures of multiple barley domestications

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Artem Pankin ◽  
Janine Altmüller ◽  
Christian Becker ◽  
Maria von Korff
Keyword(s):  
Wild Barley ◽  
Molecular Data ◽  
Molecular Evidence ◽  
List Type ◽  
Selective Sweeps ◽  
Wild Populations ◽  
Genomic Signatures ◽  
Fertile Crescent ◽  
Origin Of Agriculture ◽  
The Relationship

SummaryBarley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is an established model to study domestication of the Fertile Crescent cereals. Recent molecular data suggested that domesticated barley genomes consist of the ancestral blocks descending from multiple wild barley populations. However, the relationship between the mosaic ancestry patterns and the process of domestication itself remained unclear.To address this knowledge gap, we identified candidate domestication genes using selection scans based on targeted resequencing of 433 wild and domesticated barley accessions. We conducted phylogenetic, population structure, and ancestry analyses to investigate the origin of the domesticated barley haplotypes separately at the neutral and candidate domestication loci.We discovered multiple selective sweeps that occurred on all barley chromosomes during domestication in the background of several ancestral wild populations. The ancestry analyses demonstrated that, although the ancestral blocks of the domesticated barley genomes descended from all over the Fertile Crescent, the candidate domestication loci originated specifically in its eastern and western parts.These findings provided first molecular evidence in favor of multiple barley domestications in the Levantine and Zagros clusters of the origin of agriculture.

A Community-Ecology Framework for Understanding Vector and Vector-Borne Disease Dynamics

2010 ◽  
Vol 56 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 251-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon Blaustein ◽  
Richard S. Ostfeld ◽  
Robert D. Holt
Keyword(s):  
Community Ecology ◽  
Apparent Competition ◽  
Disease Dynamics ◽  
Parasite Diversity ◽  
Community Interactions ◽  
Vector Borne Diseases ◽  
Vector Borne Disease ◽  
Risk Of Predation ◽  
Vector Borne ◽  
Vector Diversity

The integration of community ecology into the understanding and management of vectors and vector-borne diseases has largely occurred only recently. This compendium examines a variety of community interactions that can affect vector or vector-borne disease dynamics. They include: the importance of risk of predation, risk of ectoparasatism, competition, interactions of competition with transgenic control, apparent competition mediated through vectors, indirect effects of pesticides, vector diversity, and parasite diversity within a vector. In this paper, we summarize these studies and introduce several additional important questions in need of further exploration.

scholarly journals Conceptual and empirical advances in Neotropical biodiversity research

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Antonelli ◽  
María Ariza ◽  
James Albert ◽  
Tobias Andermann ◽  
Josué Azevedo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Island Biogeography ◽  
Molecular Data ◽  
Ecological Interactions ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Climatic Evolution ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Taxonomic Studies ◽  
American Tropics

The outstanding biodiversity found in the American tropics (the Neotropics) has attracted the attention of naturalists for centuries. Despite major advances in the generation of biodiversity data, many questions remain to be answered. In this review, we first summarize some of the knowns and unknowns about Neotropical biodiversity, and discuss how human impact may have drastically affected some of the patterns observed today. We then link biodiversity to landscape, and outline major advances in biogeographical research. In particular, we argue that it is crucial to test the effect of landscape and climatic evolution to biotic diversification and distribution in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of current patterns. In this context, it is also important to consider extant and extinct taxa, as well as to use probabilistic and parametric methods that explicitly include landscape evolution models. We subsequently explore different scales in Neotropical biogeography, focusing on the intersection between biogeography and community ecology, both of which often address similar questions from different angles. The concepts of community assembly, island biogeography, neutral processes, and ecological interactions are then discussed as important components of the complex processes that determine the patterns observed today. Single-taxon and cross-taxonomic studies are complementary and greatly needed, but achieving synthesis remains challenging. Finally, we argue that phylogenetic approaches hold great potential to connect across taxonomic, spatial and temporal scales, despite current difficulties to generate and cross-analyze large volumes of molecular data. We conclude by outlining major prospects and hindrances for further advancing our knowledge on the rich Neotropical biodiversity.

Disease dynamics in wild populations: modeling and estimation: a review

2010 ◽  
Vol 152 (S2) ◽  
pp. 485-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan G. Cooch ◽  
Paul B. Conn ◽  
Stephen P. Ellner ◽  
Andrew P. Dobson ◽  
Kenneth H. Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Disease Dynamics ◽  
Wild Populations

scholarly journals The duration of travel impacts the spatial dynamics of infectious diseases

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (36) ◽  
pp. 22572-22579 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Giles ◽  
Elisabeth zu Erbach-Schoenberg ◽  
Andrew J. Tatem ◽  
Lauren Gardner ◽  
Ottar N. Bjørnstad ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Trip Duration ◽  
Disease Dynamics ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Spatial Transmission

Humans can impact the spatial transmission dynamics of infectious diseases by introducing pathogens into susceptible environments. The rate at which this occurs depends in part on human-mobility patterns. Increasingly, mobile-phone usage data are used to quantify human mobility and investigate the impact on disease dynamics. Although the number of trips between locations and the duration of those trips could both affect infectious-disease dynamics, there has been limited work to quantify and model the duration of travel in the context of disease transmission. Using mobility data inferred from mobile-phone calling records in Namibia, we calculated both the number of trips between districts and the duration of these trips from 2010 to 2014. We fit hierarchical Bayesian models to these data to describe both the mean trip number and duration. Results indicate that trip duration is positively related to trip distance, but negatively related to the destination population density. The highest volume of trips and shortest trip durations were among high-density districts, whereas trips among low-density districts had lower volume with longer duration. We also analyzed the impact of including trip duration in spatial-transmission models for a range of pathogens and introduction locations. We found that inclusion of trip duration generally delays the rate of introduction, regardless of pathogen, and that the variance and uncertainty around spatial spread increases proportionally with pathogen-generation time. These results enhance our understanding of disease-dispersal dynamics driven by human mobility, which has potential to elucidate optimal spatial and temporal scales for epidemic interventions.

scholarly journals Spatiotemporal transmission dynamics of co-circulating dengue, Zika, and chikungunya viruses in Fortaleza, Brazil: 2011–2017

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. e0008760
Author(s):  
Lilit Kazazian ◽  
Antonio S. Lima Neto ◽  
Geziel S. Sousa ◽  
Osmar José do Nascimento ◽  
Marcia C. Castro
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Clustering ◽  
Scan Statistics ◽  
Transmission Dynamics ◽  
Competitive Interactions ◽  
Time Intervals ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
The City ◽  
Spatiotemporal Transmission ◽  
Neighborhood Level ◽  
Time Scan

The mosquito-borne viruses dengue (DENV), Zika (ZIKV), and chikungunya (CHIKV), now co-endemic in the Americas, pose growing threats to health worldwide. However, it remains unclear whether there exist interactions between these viruses that could shape their epidemiology. This study advances knowledge by assessing the transmission dynamics of co-circulating DENV, ZIKV, and CHIKV in the city of Fortaleza, Brazil. Spatiotemporal transmission dynamics of DENV, ZIKV, and CHIKV were analyzed using georeferenced data on over 210,000 reported cases from 2011 to 2017 in Fortaleza, Brazil. Local spatial clustering tests and space-time scan statistics were used to compare transmission dynamics across all years. The transmission of co-circulating viruses in 2016 and 2017 was evaluated at fine spatial and temporal scales using a measure of spatiotemporal dependence, the τ-statistic. Results revealed differences in the diffusion of CHIKV compared to previous DENV epidemics and spatially distinct transmission of DENV/ZIKV and CHIKV during the period of their co-circulation. Significant spatial clustering of viruses of the same type was observed within 14-day time intervals at distances of up to 6.8 km (p<0.05). These results suggest that arbovirus risk is not uniformly distributed within cities during co-circulation. Findings may guide outbreak preparedness and response efforts by highlighting the clustered nature of transmission of co-circulating arboviruses at the neighborhood level. The potential for competitive interactions between the arboviruses should be further investigated.

scholarly journals Conceptual and empirical advances in Neotropical biodiversity research

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Antonelli ◽  
María Ariza ◽  
James Albert ◽  
Tobias Andermann ◽  
Josué Azevedo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Island Biogeography ◽  
Molecular Data ◽  
Ecological Interactions ◽  
Biodiversity Data ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Climatic Evolution ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Taxonomic Studies ◽  
American Tropics

The outstanding biodiversity found in the American tropics (the Neotropics) has attracted the attention of naturalists for centuries. Despite major advances in the generation of biodiversity data, many questions remain to be answered. In this review, we first summarize some of the knowns and unknowns about Neotropical biodiversity, and discuss how human impact may have drastically affected some of the patterns observed today. We then link biodiversity to landscape, and outline major advances in biogeographical research. In particular, we argue that it is crucial to test the effect of landscape and climatic evolution to biotic diversification and distribution in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of current patterns. In this context, it is also important to consider extant and extinct taxa, as well as to use probabilistic and parametric methods that explicitly include landscape evolution models. We subsequently explore different scales in Neotropical biogeography, focusing on the intersection between biogeography and community ecology, both of which often address similar questions from different angles. The concepts of community assembly, island biogeography, neutral processes, and ecological interactions are then discussed as important components of the complex processes that determine the patterns observed today. Single-taxon and cross-taxonomic studies are complementary and greatly needed, but achieving synthesis remains challenging. Finally, we argue that phylogenetic approaches hold great potential to connect across taxonomic, spatial and temporal scales, despite current difficulties to generate and cross-analyze large volumes of molecular data. We conclude by outlining major prospects and hindrances for further advancing our knowledge on the rich Neotropical biodiversity.

scholarly journals Cross-modal individual recognition in wild African lions

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 20160323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Gilfillan ◽  
Jessica Vitale ◽  
John Weldon McNutt ◽  
Karen McComb
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Individual Recognition ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Panthera Leo ◽  
Wild Populations ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
Expectancy Violation ◽  
Loud Call ◽  
African Lions ◽  
Robust Evidence

Individual recognition is considered to have been fundamental in the evolution of complex social systems and is thought to be a widespread ability throughout the animal kingdom. Although robust evidence for individual recognition remains limited, recent experimental paradigms that examine cross-modal processing have demonstrated individual recognition in a range of captive non-human animals. It is now highly relevant to test whether cross-modal individual recognition exists within wild populations and thus examine how it is employed during natural social interactions. We address this question by testing audio–visual cross-modal individual recognition in wild African lions ( Panthera leo ) using an expectancy-violation paradigm. When presented with a scenario where the playback of a loud-call (roaring) broadcast from behind a visual block is incongruent with the conspecific previously seen there, subjects responded more strongly than during the congruent scenario where the call and individual matched. These findings suggest that lions are capable of audio–visual cross-modal individual recognition and provide a useful method for studying this ability in wild populations.

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