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Synergistic Effects of Grassland Fragmentation and Temperature on Bovine Rabies Emergence

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Abstract

In 2007, common vampire bats were the source of the first outbreak of paralytic bovine rabies in Uruguay. The outbreak coincided in space and time with the fragmentation of native grasslands for monospecific forestry for wood and cellulose production. Using spatial analyses, we show that the increase in grassland fragmentation, together with the minimum temperature in the winter, accounts for the spatial pattern of outbreaks in the country. We propose that fragmentation may increase the connectivity of vampire bat colonies by promoting the sharing of feeding areas, while temperature modulates their home range plasticity. While a recent introduction of the virus from neighboring Brazil could have had an effect on outbreak occurrence, we show here that the distribution of rabies cases is unlikely to be explained by only an invasion process from Brazil. In accordance with previous modeling efforts, an increase in connectivity may promote spatial persistence of rabies virus within vampire bat populations. Our results suggest that land use planning might help to reduce grassland fragmentation and thus reduce risk of rabies transmission to livestock. This will be especially important in the context of climatic changes and increasing minimum temperatures in the winter.

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Acknowledgments

GBN was funded by a Fulbright Graduate Scholarship, Bat Conservation International (Student Research Scholarship for Global Bat Conservation Priorities), and American Society of Mammalogists (Latin American Student Field Research Award). RKP was supported by the National Science Foundation (DEB-1716698), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA D16AP00113), the US National Institutes of General Medical Sciences IDeA Program (P20GM103474 and P30GM110732), and the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (RC-2633). This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, Hatch project under accession number 0185725. The views, opinions, and/or findings expressed are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the US Government. We want to thank the collaboration of Alvaro Soutullo and Marcel Achkar (UDELAR) during the early stages of this research, Angel Segura (UDELAR) for his valuable comments on the data analysis, Nathan Justice (MSU) for his help with the processing of some of the spatial layers and Devin Jones (MSU) for the help with the manuscript editing. The Uruguay´s Ministry of Livestock (MGAP) provided the data on rabies quarantined ranches through a formal request under the Free Access to Public Information Act (Law 18.831) in January 2017 (Exp. 2016/7/1/1/14253).

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Correspondence to Germán Botto Nuñez.

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Botto Nuñez, G., Becker, D.J., Lawrence, R.L. et al. Synergistic Effects of Grassland Fragmentation and Temperature on Bovine Rabies Emergence. EcoHealth 17, 203–216 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-020-01486-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-020-01486-9

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