Light pollution affects West Nile virus exposure risk across Florida

Abstract

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) present global health threats, and their emergences are often linked to anthropogenic change. Artificial light at night (ALAN) is one form of anthropogenic change that spans beyond urban boundaries and may be relevant to EIDs through its influence on the behaviour and physiology of hosts and/or vectors. Although West Nile virus (WNV) emergence has been described as peri-urban, we hypothesized that exposure risk could also be influenced by ALAN in particular, which is testable by comparing the effects of ALAN on prevalence while controlling for other aspects of urbanization. By modelling WNV exposure among sentinel chickens in Florida, we found strong support for a nonlinear relationship between ALAN and WNV exposure risk in chickens with peak WNV risk occurring at low ALAN levels. Although our goal was not to discern how ALAN affected WNV relative to other factors, effects of ALAN on WNV exposure were stronger than other known drivers of risk (i.e. impervious surface, human population density). Ambient temperature in the month prior to sampling, but no other considered variables, strongly influenced WNV risk. These results indicate that ALAN may contribute to spatio-temporal changes in WNV risk, justifying future investigations of ALAN on other vector-borne parasites.

Ecological and life-history traits and their relationship with West Nile virus and Saint Louis Encephalitis virus exposure risk

“…To test the effects of ecological and life-history traits on birds’ exposure risk, data including WNV and SLEV birds’ serological status was used as response variable (Kernbach et al 2021). We used generalised linear mixed models (GLMM) with Binomial error distribution and logit link function.…”

“…Consequently, mosquitoes feeding patterns take an important role in viral dynamics (Kilpatrick et al 2006a), affecting host-vector encounter rates and favouring certain host species to be chosen by competent vectors. Despite certain evolutionary and environmental conditions that affect mosquitos feeding patterns-i.e., host availability, hosts defensive behaviours and blood nutritive value-there are interspecific differences in host life-history traits that can influence host-vector encounter rates, and so differentially determine the exposure risk of bird species and modulate the host-viral encounters dynamics (Lyimo & Ferguson 2009;Kernbach et al 2021). Some of the life history traits that can have repercussions in modelling exposure risk in host species are nest characteristics, body mass, clutch size, migratory behaviour, and diet type, among others.…”

A synthesis of the risks of marine light pollution across organismal and ecological scales

“…There are few marine studies on cumulative effects of anthropogenic change. In terrestrial ecosystems, compounding effects of light and changing temperature (Davies & Smyth, 2017; Miller et al, 2017), light and noise pollution (Ferraro, Le & Francis, 2020; Wilson et al, 2021), and other compounding stressors (Grubisic et al, 2018; Kernbach et al, 2021) have been examined. There are few comparable studies in marine systems (e.g.…”

Artificial Light as a Modulator of Mosquito-Borne Disease Risk

“…• Artificial Light at Night can alter West Nile virus exposure risk across Florida (Kernbach et al, 2021) and increases virus competence in its ubiquitous passerine reservoir species (Kernbach et al, 2019); both studies investigated ALAN at broad spatial scales.…”