Ecological approaches in veterinary epidemiology: mapping the risk of bat-borne rabies using vegetation indices and night-time light satellite imagery

Veterinary Research
Luis E EscobarGonzalo Medina-Vogel

Abstract

Rabies remains a disease of significant public health concern. In the Americas, bats are an important source of rabies for pets, livestock, and humans. For effective rabies control and prevention, identifying potential areas for disease occurrence is critical to guide future research, inform public health policies, and design interventions. To anticipate zoonotic infectious diseases distribution at coarse scale, veterinary epidemiology needs to advance via exploring current geographic ecology tools and data using a biological approach. We analyzed bat-borne rabies reports in Chile from 2002 to 2012 to establish associations between rabies occurrence and environmental factors to generate an ecological niche model (ENM). The main rabies reservoir in Chile is the bat species Tadarida brasiliensis; we mapped 726 occurrences of rabies virus variant AgV4 in this bat species and integrated them with contemporary Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The correct prediction of areas with rabies in bats and the reliable anticipation of human rabies in our study illustrate the usefulness of ENM for mapping rabies and other zoonotic pathogens. Additionally, we hig...Continue Reading

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Citations

Aug 23, 2016·Frontiers in Microbiology·Luis E Escobar, Meggan E Craft
May 14, 2016·Journal of Fish Diseases·L E EscobarN B D Phelps
Oct 19, 2019·Ecology and Evolution·Xiao FengMonica Papeş
Mar 23, 2017·Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica·Falk HuettmannKarsten Hueffer
Mar 9, 2021·Frontiers in Veterinary Science·Manuel JaraGustavo Machado

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Software Mentioned

Maxent
NicheA
ENM
Partial ROC
GeoTIFF ( Tagged Image File Format
Address Validation Tool
MODIS Reprojection Tool
GoogleEarth
ESRI ArcGIS

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