AI Article Synopsis
- Understanding the relationship between vectors (like mosquitoes) and animal reservoirs (including birds and crocodilians) is crucial in the context of emerging zoonotic diseases like West Nile Virus (WNV), which is primarily transmitted to humans through these vectors.
- Recent findings indicate that crocodilians can also serve as competent hosts for WNV, raising concerns about their role in the virus's transmission to mosquitoes.
- Climate change is projected to alter the distribution of both mosquito and crocodilian species in North America, increasing the risk of WNV outbreaks, particularly for people living near crocodilian habitats.
Article Abstract
In an age of emerging zoonoses, it is important to understand the intricate system of vectors and reservoirs, or hosts, and their relation to humans. West Nile Virus (WNV) has been detected in a myriad of nonhuman hosts. Transmission of the virus to humans is reliant on amplified seroprevalence within the host, which occurs primarily in birds. However, recent studies have found that other animal groups, including crocodilians, can obtain seroprevalence amplification to levels that make them competent hosts able to transmit WNV to mosquitoes, which can then transmit to humans. Climate change could exacerbate this transmission risk by shifting the distributions of mosquito vectors towards novel geographic ranges. Here, we use maximum entropy models to map the current and future distributions of three mosquito vector species and four crocodilian species in North America to determine the emerging risk of WNV outbreaks associated with changing climates and WNV associated with crocodilians in North America. From our models, we determined that one mosquito species in particular, , will increase its distribution across the ranges of all crocodilian species in all tested climate change scenarios. This poses a potential risk to public health for people visiting and living near crocodilian farms and high-density natural crocodilian populations.
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|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11433929 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms12091898 | DOI Listing |
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