Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B

Author ORCID Identifier

Hillary S. Young https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0449-8582

Charles L. Nunn https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9330-2873

Volume

372

Publisher

The Royal Society Publishing

Publication Date

4-24-2017

Journal Article Version

Version of Record

First Page

1

Last Page

11

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Abstract

Understanding the effects of anthropogenic disturbance on zoonotic disease risk is both a critical conservation objective and a public health priority. Here, we evaluate the effects of multiple forms of anthropogenic disturbance across a precipitation gradient on the abundance of pathogen-infected small mammal hosts in a multi-host, multi-pathogen system in central Kenya. Our results suggest that conversion to cropland and wildlife loss alone drive systematic increases in rodent-borne pathogen prevalence, but that pastoral conversion has no such systematic effects. The effects are most likely explained both by changes in total small mammal abundance, and by changes in relative abundance of a few high-competence species, although changes in vector assemblages may also be involved. Several pathogens responded to interactions between disturbance type and climatic conditions, suggesting the potential for synergistic effects of anthropogenic disturbance and climate change on the distribution of disease risk. Overall, these results indicate that conservation can be an effective tool for reducing abundance of rodent-borne pathogens in some contexts (e.g. wildlife loss alone); however, given the strong variation in effects across disturbance types, pathogen taxa and environmental conditions, the use of conservation as public health interventions will need to be carefully tailored to specific pathogens and human contexts.

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