Drought and immunity determine the intensity of West Nile virus epidemics and climate change impacts.

ABSTRACT: The effect of global climate change on infectious disease remains hotly debated because multiple extrinsic and intrinsic drivers interact to influence transmission dynamics in nonlinear ways. The dominant drivers of widespread pathogens, like West Nile virus, can be challenging to identify due to regional variability in vector and host ecology, with past studies producing disparate findings. Here, we used analyses at national and state scales to examine a suite of climatic and intrinsic drivers of continental-scale West Nile virus epidemics, including an empirically derived mechanistic relationship between temperature and transmission potential that accounts for spatial variability in vectors. We found that drought was the primary climatic driver of increased West Nile virus epidemics, rat

SUBMITTER: Paull SH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5310598 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature