Department of Clinical Veterinary Studies, University of Zimbabwe, P.O. Box MP 167, Mount Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe.
Prev Vet Med. 2013 Aug 1;111(1-2):25-30. doi: 10.1016/j.prevetmed.2013.04.006. Epub 2013 May 29.
Anthrax continues to cause significant mortalities in livestock, wildlife and humans worldwide. In Zimbabwe, anthrax outbreaks have been reported almost annually over the past four decades. In this study we tested whether anthrax outbreak data and a set of environmental variables can be used to predict the ecological niche for Bacillus anthracis using maximum entropy modelling for species geographical distribution (Maxent). Confirmed geo-referenced anthrax outbreaks data for the period 1995-2010 were used as presence locations and a set of environmental parameters; precipitation, temperature, vegetation biomass, soil type and terrain as predictor variables. Results showed that the environmental variables can adequately predict the ecological niche of B. anthracis (AUC for test data=0.717, p<0.001), with soil type as the most important predictor followed by variance of vegetation biomass and maximum temperature. These results imply that the model we tested may be used by animal health authorities in devising better control strategies for anthrax.
炭疽病继续在全球范围内给牲畜、野生动物和人类造成重大死亡。在津巴布韦，在过去的四十年中，炭疽病爆发几乎每年都有报告。在这项研究中，我们测试了炭疽病爆发数据和一组环境变量是否可以用于使用最大熵模型（Maxent）预测物种地理分布的炭疽杆菌的生态位。使用了 1995 年至 2010 年期间确认的地理位置炭疽病爆发数据作为存在位置，并使用了一组环境参数；降水、温度、植被生物量、土壤类型和地形作为预测变量。结果表明，环境变量可以充分预测 B. anthracis 的生态位（测试数据的 AUC=0.717，p<0.001），土壤类型是最重要的预测因子，其次是植被生物量的方差和最高温度。这些结果表明，我们测试的模型可用于动物卫生当局制定更好的炭疽病控制策略。
