Forecasting potential emergence of zoonotic diseases in Southeast Asia: network analysis identifies key rodent hosts

1. Within complex ecological systems, identifying animal species likely to play a key role in the emergence of infectious zoonotic diseases remains a major challenge. One approach consists of using information on current ecological and parasitological similarities among host species in order to predict the most likely pathways for future pathogen spillover.

2. Using field data acquired from 15 sympatric rodent species in various habitats in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, we built networks based on shared parasites (17 helminth and 15 microparasite species) and shared habitats among rodent species and humans. We investigated the architectures of bipartite and unipartite networks using modularity, subgroups partitioning or node centrality, to assess the relative epidemiological importance of particular rodent species.

3. Our results showed that Rattus tanezumi, Bandicota savilei and R. exulans were consistently found to be members of subgroups that included humans in unipartite and bi...