Plague outbreaks in prairie dog populations explained by percolation thresholds of alternate host abundance

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1002826107
• Publication Date: 2010-07-27T03:41:37Z
• Authors: Daniel J. Salkeld; Marcel Salathé; Paul Stapp; James Holland Jones
• Keywords: Cynomys ludovicianus; plague; Yersinia pestis; Susceptible individual

Highly lethal pathogens (e.g., hantaviruses, hendra virus, anthrax, or plague) pose unique public-health problems, because they seem to periodically flare into outbreaks before disappearing long quiescent phases. A key element their possible control and eradication is being able understand where persist in the latent phase how identify conditions that result sporadic epidemics epizootics. In American grasslands, plague, caused by Yersinia pestis , exemplifies this quiescent–outbreak pattern, it sporadically erupts epizootics decimate prairie dog ( Cynomys ludovicianus ) colonies, yet causes of mechanisms for interepizootic persistence disease are poorly understood. Using field data on community ecology, flea behavior, plague-transmission biology, we find plague can prairie-dog colonies prolonged periods, host movement highly spatially constrained. The abundance an alternate vectors, grasshopper mouse Onychomys leucogaster ), drives increasing connectivity hosts therefore, permitting percolation throughout primary population. These results offer alternative perspective plague's ecology (i.e., transmission exacerbated hosts) may have ramifications dynamics Asia Africa, a single main has traditionally been considered drive ecology. Furthermore, thresholds be phenomenon determining many multihost-disease systems.