Evidence of repeated zoonotic pathogen spillover events at ecological boundaries.

ABSTRACT: Anthropogenic modifications to the landscape have altered several ecological processes worldwide, creating new ecological boundaries at the human/wildlife interface. Outbreaks of zoonotic pathogens often occur at these ecological boundaries, but the mechanisms behind new emergences remain drastically understudied. Here, we test for the influence of two types of ecosystem boundaries on spillover risk: (1) biotic transition zones such as species range edges and transitions between ecoregions and (2) land use transition zones where wild landscapes occur in close proximity to heavily impacted areas of high human population density. Using ebolavirus as a model system and an ensemble machine learning modeling framework, we investigated the role of likely reservoir (bats) and accidental host (pri

SUBMITTER: Filion A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11577354 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature