Epidemiological connectivity between humans and animals across an urban landscape

Hassell, James and Fevre, Eric ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8931-4986 (2023) Epidemiological connectivity between humans and animals across an urban landscape. [Data Collection]

Data Catalogue DOI: 10.17638/datacat.liverpool.ac.uk/2236

Original publication URL: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2218860120

Description

Urbanization is predicted to be a key driver of disease emergence through human exposure to novel, animal-borne pathogens. However, while we suspect that urban landscapes are primed to expose people to novel animal-borne diseases, evidence for the mechanisms by which this occurs is lacking. To address this, we studied how bacterial genes are shared between wild animals, livestock and humans (n=1428) across Nairobi, Kenya – one of the world’s most rapidly developing cities. Applying a novel multilayer network framework, we show that low biodiversity (of both natural habitat and vertebrate wildlife communities), coupled with livestock management practices and more densely populated urban environments, promotes sharing of Escherichia coli-borne bacterial mobile genetic elements (MGEs) between animals and humans. These results provide empirical support for hypotheses linking resource provision and the spatial distribution of hosts to urban dynamics of cross-species pathogen transmission at a landscape scale, thereby identifying factors that should be considered when mitigating emerging infectious disease risk in urban populations.

Keywords:

DISEASE ECOLOGY; URBANIZATION; PATHOGEN SPILLOVER; INTERFACE; ONE HEALTH; DISEASE EMERGENCE

Divisions:

Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences > Livestock & One Health

Depositing User:

Eric Fevre

Date Deposited:

16 May 2023 11:55

Last Modified:

05 Jul 2023 15:16

DOI:

10.17638/datacat.liverpool.ac.uk/2236