Blood thicker than water: kinship, disease prevalence and group size drive divergent patterns of infection risk in a social mammal.

ABSTRACT: The importance of social- and kin-structuring of populations for the transmission of wildlife disease is widely assumed but poorly described. Social structure can help dilute risks of transmission for group members, and is relatively easy to measure, but kin-association represents a further level of population sub-structure that is harder to measure, particularly when association behaviours happen underground. Here, using epidemiological and molecular genetic data from a wild, high-density population of the European badger (Meles meles), we quantify the risks of infection with Mycobacterium bovis (the causative agent of tuberculosis) in cubs. The risk declines with increasing size of its social group, but this net dilution effect conceals divergent patterns of infection risk. Cubs only enj

SUBMITTER: Benton CH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4971205 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature