Effects of social structure and management on risk of disease establishment in wild pigs

1. Contact heterogeneity among hosts determines invasion and spreading dynamics of infectious disease, thus its characterization is essential for identifying effective disease control strategies. Yet, little is known about the factors shaping contact networks in many wildlife species and how wildlife management actions might affect contact networks.

2. Wild pigs in North America are an invasive, socially-structured species that pose a health concern for domestic swine given their ability to transmit numerous devastating diseases such as African swine fever (ASF). Using proximity loggers and GPS data from 48 wild pigs in Florida and South Carolina, USA, we employed a probabilistic framework to estimate weighted contact networks. We determined the effects of sex, social group, and spatial distribution (monthly home range overlap and distance) on wild pig contact. We also estimated the impacts of management-induced perturbations on contact and inferred their effects on ASF establishment...

1. 宿主间的接触异质性决定了传染病的入侵与传播动力学过程，因此对其开展表征工作是制定高效疾病防控策略的必要前提。然而，目前学界对多数野生动物类群中塑造接触网络的影响因素，以及野生动物管理举措可能如何作用于接触网络的认知仍十分有限。
2. 北美洲野生猪属于入侵性且具有社会结构的物种，因其可传播非洲猪瘟（African Swine Fever, ASF）等多种毁灭性传染病，对家猪健康构成严重威胁。本研究依托美国佛罗里达州与南卡罗来纳州48头野生猪的近距离接触记录仪与GPS定位数据，采用概率建模框架估算得到加权接触网络。我们分析了性别、社会群体以及空间分布（月度家域重叠度与空间距离）对野生猪接触行为的影响；同时评估了管理措施引发的人为干扰对接触网络的作用，并推断其对非洲猪瘟定殖的潜在影响……