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. 2019 Jun 19;6(6):190216.
doi: 10.1098/rsos.190216. eCollection 2019 Jun.

Human plague system associated with rodent diversity and other environmental factors

Zhe Sun  1   2   3 , Lei Xu  1   2   3   4 , Boris V Schmid  2 , Katharine R Dean  2 , Zhibin Zhang  5 , Yan Xie  5 , Xiye Fang  4 , Shuchun Wang  4 , Qiyong Liu  4 , Baolei Lyu  1 , Xinru Wan  5 , Jianguo Xu  4 , Nils Chr Stenseth  1   2   3 , Bing Xu  1   3
Affiliations

Human plague system associated with rodent diversity and other environmental factors

Zhe Sun et al. R Soc Open Sci. .

Abstract

Plague remains a threat to public health and is considered as a re-emerging infectious disease today. Rodents play an important role as major hosts in plague persistence and driving plague outbreaks in natural foci; however, few studies have tested the association between host diversity in ecosystems and human plague risk. Here we use zero-inflated generalized additive models to examine the association of species richness with human plague presence (where plague outbreaks could occur) and intensity (the average number of annual human cases when they occurred) in China during the Third Pandemic. We also account for transportation network density, annual precipitation levels and human population size. We found rodent species richness, particularly of rodent plague hosts, is positively associated with the presence of human plague. Further investigation shows that species richness of both wild and commensal rodent plague hosts are positively correlated with the presence, but only the latter correlated with the intensity. Our results indicated a positive relationship between rodent diversity and human plague, which may provide suggestions for the plague surveillance system.

Keywords: generalized additive model; species richness–disease relationship; the Third Pandemic.

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Conflict of interest statement

We have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Human plague intensity in mainland China from 1772 to 1964 and transportation routes. (a) Average human plague intensity (average number of annual human cases when plague occurred) after logarithmic transformation in 1° grids in mainland China. Colours show grids with presence of plague. (b) Historical railways and main roads in mainland China.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Spatial distribution of host diversity in mainland China. Species richness of (a) all mammals, (b) known plague reservoir hosts, (c) all rodents, (d) rodent plague hosts, (e) commensal rodent plague hosts, and (f) wild rodent plague hosts.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Partial effects of smooth functions on human plague presence and intensity of the model with species richness of rodent plague hosts. (a–d) The binomial part quantifies the presence of plague. (e–h) The lognormal part evaluates the positive plague intensity.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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