Climate Change Influences the Spread of African Swine Fever Virus

Abstract

Climate change is an inevitable and urgent issue in the current world. African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a re-emerging viral animal disease. This study investigates the quantitative association between climate change and the potential spread of ASFV to a global extent. ASFV in wild boar outbreak locations recorded from 1 January 2019 to 29 July 2022 were sampled and investigated using the ecological distribution tool, the Maxent model, with WorldClim bioclimatic data as the predictor variables. The future impacts of climate change on ASFV distribution based on the model were scoped with Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) scenarios of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) bioclimatic data for 2050 and 2070. The results show that precipitation of the driest month (Bio14) was the highest contributor, and annual mean temperature (Bio1) was obtained as the highest permutation importance variable on the spread of ASFV. Based on the analyzed scenarios, we found that the future climate is favourable for ASFV disease; only quantitative ratios are different and directly associated with climate change. The current study could be a reference material for wildlife health management, climate change issues, and World Health Organization sustainability goal 13: climate action.

Keywords: ASFV; Maxent; disease; management; wildlife.

Figure 1

Study flow.

Figure 2

Maxent predicted map with current bioclimatic features and wild boar ASF outbreak locations (black arrow points to Europe as the recent hotspot of ASFV).

Figure 3

ASFV suitability map with different (a) RCP 2.6_2050, (b) RCP 2.6_2070, (c) RCP 4.5_ 2050, (d) RCP 4.5_ 2070, (e) RCP 6.0 _ 2050, (f) RCP 6.0 _2070, (g) RCP 8.5_ 2050, and (h) RCP 8.5_ 2070 scenarios.

Figure 4

Average change (percent) of ASFV suitability index and standard deviation (error bars) in different scenarios from current year to 2050 and 2070.