Plague reservoir species throughout the world

Abstract

Plague has been known since ancient times as a re-emerging infectious disease, causing considerable socioeconomic burden in regional hotspots. To better understand the epidemiological cycle of the causative agent of the plague, its potential occurrence, and possible future dispersion, one must carefully consider the taxonomy, distribution, and ecological requirements of reservoir-species in relation either to natural or human-driven changes (e.g. climate change or urbanization). In recent years, the depth of knowledge on species taxonomy and species composition in different landscapes has undergone a dramatic expansion, driven by modern taxonomic methods such as synthetic surveys that take into consideration morphology, genetics, and the ecological setting of captured animals to establish their species identities. Here, we consider the recent taxonomic changes of the rodent species in known plague reservoirs and detail their distribution across the world, with a particular focus on those rodents considered to be keystone host species. A complete checklist of all known plague-infectable vertebrates living in plague foci is provided as a Supporting Information table.

Plague risk in the western United States over seven decades of environmental change

“…If there are positive, general associations between rodent diversity and plague risk, this would be an exception to widespread evidence of biodiversity dilution effects for other vector-borne diseases 66 . Most theoretical models of the dilution effect rely on a skewed distribution of host competence, where higher host diversity leads to reduced transmission in the narrow subset of competent hosts 67,68,69 ; plague is perhaps uniquely capable of infecting and causing disease in hundreds of host species 70 , and therefore may not exhibit these dynamics, though only a limited number of species develop a high enough viremia to infect a feeding flea. Alternately, it may be that scale underlies this pattern; theory suggests that dilution effects are strongest at small scales, while amplification effects may be normal at continental scales 30,71 .…”

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Rodents During Active and Quiescent Periods in the Plague Focus in Exu, Northeastern Brazil

“…The rats are relatively resistant to fatal plague infection and do not suffer from important die-offs that could lead to epizootization in the absence of susceptible species [10,15,[30][31]. On the other hand, the R. rattus might be a preserver host by maintaining the plague dormant until eventual flea re-infection might reactivate the epizootic cycle after restoration of the susceptible wild hosts populations [3,32].…”

“…The rodents constitute the most diverse order (Rodentia) of mammals, with almost 2,600 species, representing 40% of the living mammal species [2]. Out of these, 279 species have already been found naturally infected by Y. pestis [3].…”

A new multi-species Protein A-ELISA assay for plague diagnosis in humans and other mammal hosts

“…Therefore, serological testing is of most importance for plague diagnosis and surveillance activities, as it can detect not only active infections in humans and other hosts, but also retrospectively identify individuals exposed to the bacteria [9,10]. In this scenario, serological surveillance must consider a wide variety of mammals to be tested, such as rodents and other small mammals, domestic (dogs and cats) and wild carnivores that pray on rodents [5,12,21,22,24].…”