Animal space use and spatial overlap can have important consequences for pathogen transmission. Identifying how environmental variability and inter-individual variation affect spatial patterns to drive transmission heterogeneity in wildlife is a priority for effective management of wildlife disease. However, there are few experimental studies investigating how food abundance and macroparasite infection affect transmission opportunities in wildlife. Wild bank voles (Myodes glareolus) are a useful study system to investigate spatial patterns of wildlife and are amenable to experimental manipulations. We conducted a replicated, factorial field experiment in which we added food and removed helminths in wild vole populations in natural forest habitat and monitored vole space use and spatial overlap using capture-mark-recapture methods. Using a combination of home range and network analyses, we quantified vole space use and spatial overlap. We then compared the effects of food addition and helminth removal and investigated the impact of season and sex on space use and spatial overlap. We found that space use was impacted by breeding season and sex but not by food addition or helminth removal. Sex-based, seasonal changes in shared space use were more notable with food addition. Food addition also increased the frequency of, and variability in, spatial overlap occurring between individual voles at trapping locations, while helminth removal had no effect. Our work provides empirical evidence quantifying the spatial effects of food abundance and macroparasite infection on wildlife populations. We demonstrate the potential for high food abundance to increase spatial overlap relevant for pathogen transmission. Our findings also suggest that individual contributions to transmission may be heterogeneous within populations and that season and sex are important covariates to consider when identifying when and with whom transmission is most likely to occur.
The One Health framework links animal, human, and environmental health, and focuses on emerging zoonotic pathogens. Understanding the interface between wildlife and human activity is critical due to the unpredictable nature of spillover of zoonotic pathogens from animals to humans. Zoos are important partners in One Health because of their contributions to education, conservation, and animal health monitoring. In addition, the housing of wildlife in captive and semi-natural settings makes zoos, especially relevant for detecting animal-related pathogens. A first step to determine the utility of zoos in contributing to pathogen surveillance is to survey the peer-reviewed literature. We, therefore, retrieved data from the previous 20 years and performed a meta-analysis to determine global patterns of viral seroprevalence in mammals housed in zoo collections from peer-reviewed literature. We analysed 50 articles, representing a total of 11,300 terrestrial mammals. Increased prevalence was found in viruses strictly targeting specific host taxonomy, especially in viruses transmitted through direct contact. Potentially complex patterns with geography were also identified, despite uneven sampling. This research highlights the role zoos could play in public health and encourages future standardized epidemiological surveillance of zoological collections.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10393-023-01635-w.
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