Deathbed choice by ASF‐infected wild boar can help find carcasses

Abstract

African swine fever (ASF) is a fatal disease infectious to wild and domesticated suids. This disease entered the European Union in 2014 and recently reached western Europe, with the first cases observed in Belgium in September 2018. Carcasses of ASF‐infected wild boar play an important role in the spread and persistence of the virus in the environment. Thus, rapidly finding and removing carcasses is a crucial measure for effective ASF control. Using distribution modelling, we investigated whether the fine‐scale distribution of ASF‐infected animals can be predicted and support wild boar carcass searches. Our results suggest that ASF‐infected wild boar selected deathbeds in cool and moist habitats; thus, deathbed choice was mostly influenced by topographic and water‐dependent covariates. Furthermore, we show that in the case of an epidemic, it is important to quickly collect a minimum of 75–100 carcasses with exact locations to build a well‐performing and efficient carcass distribution model. The proposed model provides an indication of where carcasses are most likely to be found and can be used as a guide to strategically allocate resources.

Estimating the Postmortem Interval of Wild Boar Carcasses

“…It has been suggested that animals infected with ASF often select deathbeds in cool and moist habitats [48]. Therefore, we included carcass 2wallow in the study design.…”

Confirmed cannibalism in wild boar and its possible role in African swine fever transmission

“…Therefore, it is essential to focus on identification and search through localities where carcasses are most likely to be found. The first studies suggested that ASF‐infected wild boars selected deathbeds in cool, moist or/and water‐rich habitats (Morelle, Ježek, Licoppe, & Podgorski, ).…”

Ecological drivers of African swine fever virus persistence in wild boar populations: insight for control

“…By fitting a mechanistic disease-dynamic model to spatio-temporal disease surveillance data using prior knowledge of wild boar population dynamics, we inferred that 53-66% of ASFV transmission events occurred through the contact of susceptible hosts with dead carcasses. Because wild boar tend not to contact carcasses immediately, but will continue to contact carcasses even during the later stages of decay (Probst et al 2017), increased surveillance and elimination of carcasses could dramatically decrease transmission (Morelle et al 2019). Thus, developing cost-effective methods for carcass detection and retrieval may be critical to reduce transmission rates in wild boar populations (Guinat et al 2017).…”