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Climate Change and Human Health Literature Portal Modeling the Ebola zoonotic dynamics: Interplay between enviroclimatic factors and bat ecology

Climate Change and Human Health Literature Portal

Buceta J, Johnson K
2017
PLoS One. 12 (6): e0179559

Understanding Ebola necessarily requires the characterization of the ecology of its main enzootic reservoir, i.e. bats, and its interplay with seasonal and enviroclimatic factors. Here we present a SIR compartmental model where we implement a bidirectional coupling between the available resources and the dynamics of the bat population in order to understand their migration patterns. Our compartmental modeling approach and simulations include transport terms to account for bats mobility and spatiotemporal climate variability. We hypothesize that environmental pressure is the main driving force for bats' migration and our results reveal the appearance of sustained migratory waves of Ebola virus infected bats coupled to resources availability. Ultimately, our study can be relevant to predict hot spots of Ebola outbreaks in space and time and suggest conservation policies to mitigate the risk of spillovers.

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Resource Description

    Meteorological Factor, Precipitation, Seasonality, Temperature
    • Meteorological Factor, Precipitation, Seasonality, Temperature: Cold, Heat
    Non-United States
    • Non-United States: Africa
    Infectious Disease
    • Infectious Disease: Zoonotic Disease
      • Zoonotic Disease: Other Zoonotic Disease, Specify
        • Other Zoonotic Disease, Specify: Ebola Virus Disease
        Zoonotic Disease (other)
      Zoonotic Disease
    Research Article
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