Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Department of Health Management, Atlantic Veterinary College, University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis. 2021 May;21(5):369-377. doi: 10.1089/vbz.2020.2700. Epub 2021 Mar 10.
Frequent outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases originating from wild animals have highlighted the necessity of managing wildlife populations to prevent zoonotic spillover, and the appropriate development of management protocols required attention on gaining a better understanding of viral dynamics in wild animal populations. In east Australia, there have been outbreaks of Hendra virus (HeV) infection in horses and humans following spillover from the virus's reservoir hosts, flying foxes (family Pteropodidae), and bat culling and colony dispersal have been proposed as appropriate management strategies. A key factor relating to flying fox population structure that influences HeV dynamics is that these bats form metapopulations, and consequently, to assess this factor, we designed an epidemic dynamics model of HeV transmission, focusing on bat metapopulation dynamics. Specifically, using flying fox movement data, we stochastically simulated models for a hypothetical metapopulation of flying foxes to examine the impact of metapopulation-related parameters, and subsequently simulated probable scenarios of culling and colony dispersal to estimate their effects on the probability of epidemic occurrence. Modeling of the hypothetical metapopulation revealed that a reduction in the number of large-sized colonies would lead to an increase in the probability of epidemic occurrence within the bat population, whereas the strong spatial coupling among colonies was found to dilute the effects of altering the number of colonies and the number of bats in each colony through culling or colony dispersal of bats on the probability that an epidemic within the bat population would occur. Culling and colony dispersal scenarios showed no significantly beneficial effect with respect to reducing the probability of an HeV epidemic occurring in flying foxes, and may indeed prove counterproductive. In conclusion, the modeling results indicate that bat culling and colony dispersal may not be an effective strategy to control HeV epidemics.
野生动物源新发传染病的频繁暴发凸显了管理野生动物种群以预防人畜共患病溢出的必要性，适当制定管理方案需要更好地了解野生动物种群中的病毒动态。在澳大利亚东部，亨德拉病毒（HeV）从病毒的储存宿主果蝠（翼手目）溢出后，在马和人中暴发了感染，提出了蝙蝠扑杀和群体分散作为适当的管理策略。影响 HeV 动态的与果蝠种群结构相关的一个关键因素是这些蝙蝠形成了复合种群，因此，为了评估这一因素，我们设计了 HeV 传播的流行动力学模型，重点关注蝙蝠复合种群动态。具体来说，使用果蝠运动数据，我们随机模拟了一个假设的果蝠复合种群模型，以检验与复合种群相关的参数的影响，随后模拟了扑杀和群体分散的可能情景，以估计它们对流行发生概率的影响。假设的复合种群模型表明，减少大型群体的数量将导致蝙蝠种群中流行发生的概率增加，而群体之间的强空间耦合则发现，通过扑杀或蝙蝠群体分散来改变群体数量和每个群体中的蝙蝠数量，对蝙蝠种群中流行发生的概率影响不大。扑杀和群体分散情景显示，在降低 HeV 在果蝠中发生流行的概率方面没有明显的有益效果，实际上可能适得其反。总之，模型结果表明，扑杀和群体分散可能不是控制 HeV 流行的有效策略。
