When viruses don't go viral

Subtitle:the importance of host phylogeographic structure in the spatial spread of arenaviruses

Many emerging infections are RNA virus spillovers from animal reservoirs. Reservoir identi-fication is necessary for predicting the geographic extent of infection risk, but rarely are taxo-nomic levels below the animal species considered as reservoir, and only key circumstances in nature and methodology allow intrinsic virus-host associations to be distinguished from simple geographic (co-) isolation. We sampled and genetically characterized in detail a con-tact zone of two subtaxa of the rodent Mastomys natalensis in Tanzania. We find two distinct arenaviruses, Gairo and Morogoro virus, each spatially confined to a single M. natalensis subtaxon, only co-occurring at the contact zone's centre. Inter-subtaxon hybridization at this centre and a continuum of quality habitat for M. natalensis show that both viruses have the ecological opportunity to spread into the other substaxon's range, but do not, strongly sug-gesting host-intrinsic barriers. Such barriers could explain why human cases of another M. natalensis-borne arenavirus, Lassa virus, are limited to West Africa.

Publication year:2017

Keywords:A1 Journal article

BOF-keylabel:yes

BOF-publication weight:6

CSS-citation score:2

Authors:International

Authors from:Higher Education

Accessibility:Open