dc.contributor.author | Atwill, Edward | |
dc.contributor.author | Isabel, Lynne A. | |
dc.contributor.author | McCowan, Brenda | |
dc.contributor.author | VanderWaal, Kimberly L. | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2014-07-09T13:10:05Z | |
dc.date.available | 2014-07-09T13:10:05Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2013 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Journal of Animal Ecology 2013 | en_US |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11295/72381 | |
dc.description.abstract | Although network analysis has drawn considerable attention as a promising tool for disease
ecology, empirical research has been hindered by limitations in detecting the occurrence
of pathogen transmission (who transmitted to whom) within social networks.
2. Using a novel approach, we utilize the genetics of a diverse microbe, Escherichia coli, to
infer where direct or indirect transmission has occurred and use these data to construct transmission
networks for a wild giraffe population (Giraffe camelopardalisi. Individuals were
considered to be a part of the same transmission chain and were interlinked in the transmission
network if they shared genetic subtypes of E. coli.
3. By using microbial genetics to quantify who transmits to whom independently from the
behavioural data on who is in contact with whom, we were able to directly investigate how
the structure of contact networks influences the structure of the transmission network. To distinguish
between the effects of social and environmental contact on transmission dynamics,
the transmission network was compared with two separate contact networks defined from the
behavioural data: a social network based on association patterns, and a spatial network based
on patterns of home-range overlap among individuals.
4. We found that links in the transmission network were more likely to occur between individuals
that were strongly linked in the social network. Furthermore, individuals that had
more numerous connections or that occupied 'bottleneck' positions in the social network
tended to occupy similar positions in the transmission network. No similar correlations were
observed between the spatial and transmission networks. This indicates that an individual's
social network position is predictive of transmission network position, which has implications
for identifying individuals that function as super-spreaders or transmission bottlenecks in the
population. | en_US |
dc.description.sponsorship | University of Nairobi | en_US |
dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
dc.publisher | British Ecological Society | en_US |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | Journal of Animal Ecology 1365-2656; | |
dc.subject | wildlife disease | en_US |
dc.subject | space-use patterns | en_US |
dc.subject | Social Structure | en_US |
dc.subject | infection dynamics | en_US |
dc.subject | epidemiology | en_US |
dc.subject | disease ecology | en_US |
dc.subject | bacterial genotyping | en_US |
dc.title | Linking social and pathogen transmission networks using microbial genetics in giraffe (Giraffa cameJopardalis) | en_US |
dc.type | Article | en_US |
dc.type.material | en | en_US |