Trypanosoma cruzi reservoir—triatomine vector co-occurrence networks reveal meta-community effects by synanthropic mammals on geographic dispersal

PeerJ

article

Carlos N. Ibarra-Cerdeña¹  Leopoldo Valiente-Banuet²  Víctor Sánchez-Cordero³  Christopher R. Stephens²  Janine M. Ramsey⁵ 

[1] Departamento de Ecología Humana;Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad ,(C3), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México;Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México;Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México;Centro Regional de Investigaciones en Salud Pública, Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública

关键词: Zoonotic disease;    Co-occurrence;    Data-mining;    Complex networks;    Chagas disease;    Mexico;    Triatominae;    Vector-host interactions;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.3152

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Contemporary patterns of land use and global climate change are modifying regional pools of parasite host species. The impact of host community changes on human disease risk, however, is difficult to assess due to a lack of information about zoonotic parasite host assemblages. We have used a recently developed method to infer parasite-host interactions for Chagas Disease (CD) from vector-host co-occurrence networks. Vector-host networks were constructed to analyze topological characteristics of the network and ecological traits of species’ nodes, which could provide information regarding parasite regional dispersal in Mexico. Twenty-eight triatomine species (vectors) and 396 mammal species (potential hosts) were included using a data-mining approach to develop models to infer most-likely interactions. The final network contained 1,576 links which were analyzed to calculate centrality, connectivity, and modularity. The model predicted links of independently registered Trypanosoma cruzi hosts, which correlated with the degree of parasite-vector co-occurrence. Wiring patterns differed according to node location, while edge density was greater in Neotropical as compared to Nearctic regions. Vectors with greatest public health importance (i.e., Triatoma dimidiata, T. barberi, T. pallidipennis, T. longipennis50% of species are synanthropic and more than 20% have been identified as T. cruzi hosts. In addition to predicting potential host species using the co-occurrence networks, they reveal regions with greater expected parasite mobility. The Neotropical region, which includes the Mexican south and southeast, and the Transvolcanic belt, had greatest potential active T. cruzi dispersal, as well as greatest edge density. This information could be directly applied for stratification of transmission risk and to design and analyze human-infected vector contact intervention efficacy.

【 授权许可】

CC BY