Fell Henry Gillies, Jones Matthew, Atkinson Steve, Stenseth Nils Christian, Algar Adam C
School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
Centre for Biomolecular Sciences, Nottingham University, Nottingham NG7 2JE, UK.
R Soc Open Sci. 2023 May 17;10(5):230021. doi: 10.1098/rsos.230021. eCollection 2023 May.
The distribution and transmission of , the bacterial agent of plague, responds dynamically to climate, both within wildlife reservoirs and human populations. The exact mechanisms mediating plague's response to climate are still poorly understood, particularly across large environmentally heterogeneous regions encompassing several reservoir species. A heterogeneous response to precipitation was observed in plague intensity across northern and southern China during the Third Pandemic. This has been attributed to the response of reservoir species in each region. We use environmental niche modelling and hindcasting methods to test the response of a broad range of reservoir species to precipitation. We find little support for the hypothesis that the response of reservoir species to precipitation mediated the impact of precipitation on plague intensity. We instead observed that precipitation variables were of limited importance in defining species niches and rarely showed the expected response to precipitation across northern and southern China. These findings do not suggest that precipitation-reservoir species dynamics never influence plague intensity but that instead, the response of reservoir species to precipitation across a single biome cannot be assumed and that limited numbers of reservoir species may have a disproportional impact upon plague intensity.
鼠疫的病原体耶尔森氏菌的分布与传播，在野生动物宿主和人类群体中都会对气候产生动态响应。介导鼠疫对气候作出反应的确切机制仍知之甚少，尤其是在包含多种宿主物种的大型环境异质性区域。在第三次鼠疫大流行期间，中国北方和南方鼠疫强度对降水呈现出异质性反应。这被归因于每个区域宿主物种的反应。我们使用环境生态位建模和后推法来测试多种宿主物种对降水的反应。我们几乎找不到证据支持宿主物种对降水的反应介导了降水对鼠疫强度影响这一假设。相反，我们观察到降水变量在定义物种生态位方面的重要性有限，而且在中国北方和南方很少表现出对降水的预期反应。这些发现并非表明降水 - 宿主物种动态从不影响鼠疫强度，而是表明不能假定单个生物群落中宿主物种对降水的反应，并且有限数量的宿主物种可能对鼠疫强度产生不成比例的影响。
