Ecological determinants of rabies virus dynamics in vampire bats and spillover to livestock.

ABSTRACT: The pathogen transmission dynamics in bat reservoirs underpin efforts to reduce risks to human health and enhance bat conservation, but are notoriously challenging to resolve. For vampire bat rabies, the geographical scale of enzootic cycles, whether environmental factors modulate baseline risk, and how within-host processes affect population-level dynamics remain unresolved. We studied patterns of rabies exposure using an 11-year, spatially replicated sero-survey of 3709 Peruvian vampire bats and co-occurring outbreaks in livestock. Seroprevalence was correlated among nearby sites but fluctuated asynchronously at larger distances. A generalized additive mixed model confirmed spatially compartmentalized transmission cycles, but no effects of bat demography or environmental context on serop

SUBMITTER: Meza DK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9449476 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature