Landscape connectivity for predicting the spread of ASF in the European wild boar population

Abstract

African swine fever (ASF) is an infectious and highly fatal disease affecting wild and domestic swine, which is unstoppably spreading worldwide. In Europe, wild boars are the main driver of local spread, transmission, and maintenance of the disease in endemic areas, and introduction into ASF-free countries. Landscape connectivity studies are the main discipline to analyze wild-species dispersal networks, and it can be an essential tool to predict dispersal-wild boars’ movement routes and probabilities and therefore the associated potential ASF-spread. We aimed to integrate wild boar connectivity predictions with their occurrence, population abundance, and ASF notifications to calculate the impact (capacity of a landscape feature to favor ASF-spread) and the risk (likelihood of a habitat patch becoming infected) of wild boars’ infection across Europe. Furthermore, we tested the accuracy of the risk of infection by comparing the results with the temporal distribution of ASF cases. Our findings highlighted that the impact and risk factors were generally higher in Europe's central and Eastern regions in the current ASF-situation. Additionally, the impact factor was 31 times higher on habitat patches that were infected the next year, proving the utility of the proposed approach and the key role of wild boars’ movements in ASF-spread.