Mixed Effects of Habitat Degradation and Resources on Hantaviruses in Sympatric Wild Rodent Reservoirs within a Neotropical Forest.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the ecology of rodent-borne hantaviruses is critical to assessing the risk of spillover to humans. Longitudinal surveys have suggested that hantaviral prevalence in a given host population is tightly linked to rodent ecology and correlates with changes in the species composition of a rodent community over time and/or habitat composition. We tested two hypotheses to identify whether resource addition and/or habitat composition may affect hantavirus prevalence among two sympatric reservoir hosts in a neotropical forest: (i) increased food resources will alter the rodent community and thus hantaviral prevalence; and (ii) host abundance and viral seroprevalence will be associated with habitat composition. We established a baseline of rodent-virus prevalence in three grid pairs of

SUBMITTER: Camp JV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7827808 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature