Previous exposure to myxomatosis reduces survival of European rabbits during outbreaks of rabbit haemorrhagic disease

1. Exploiting disease and parasite synergies could increase the efficacy of biological control of invasive species. In Australia, two viruses were introduced to control European rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus — myxoma virus in 1950, and rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus in 1995. While these biological controls caused initial declines of > 95% in affected populations, today rabbits remain a problem in many areas, despite recurring outbreaks of both diseases. 2. We used eighteen years of capture-mark-recapture, dead recovery, and antibody assay data from a sentinel population in South Australia to test whether these two diseases interact to modify the survival of individual wild rabbits. We compared four joint, multi-state, dead-recovery models to test the hypotheses that rabbit haemorrhagic disease and myxoma viruses have synergistic (i.e., previous exposure to one virus affects survival during outbreaks of the other virus) or additive effects (i.e., previous exposure to one virus doe...1. 利用病原物协同效应可提升入侵物种生物防治的效能。在澳大利亚，研究人员于1950年和1995年分别引入两种病毒以防控欧洲穴兔（Oryctolagus cuniculus）：黏液瘤病毒（myxoma virus）与兔出血症病毒（rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus）。尽管这两种生物防治手段最初使受影响种群的种群数量下降超95%，但即便两种疾病反复暴发，如今在诸多区域穴兔仍为害成患。 2. 本研究依托澳大利亚南部某哨兵种群（sentinel population）长达18年的标记重捕（capture-mark-recapture）、死亡回收（dead recovery）与抗体检测（antibody assay）数据，探究这两种病毒是否会通过相互作用影响野生穴兔个体的存活状况。我们构建了4种联合多状态死亡回收模型（multi-state dead-recovery models），以检验以下假说：兔出血症病毒与黏液瘤病毒存在协同效应（即预先暴露于一种病毒会改变个体在另一种病毒暴发期间的存活概率），抑或二者存在加性效应（即预先暴露于一种病毒不会对个体在另一种病毒暴发期间的存活情况产生额外影响……