Understanding bacterial zoonotic disease infection and its severity on wildlife populations
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Emerging infectious diseases have significantly increased in recent years; approximately 60 percent of these emerging diseases are of zoonotic origin, and of those, around 70 percent were identified to start with wild animals. To better understand the impacts of zoonotic diseases on wildlife, there is a need to identify the number of zoonotic pathogens that can infect wildlife and evaluate the subsequent severity of these pathogens to individual wildlife species. I constructed a zoonotic disease database identifying wildlife hosts for each bacterial zoonotic disease, and recorded clinical signs for each individual if found. To evaluate severity of diseases for individual wildlife species I quantified clinical signs using a severity index and averaged the clinical signs scores to give an overall ranking of severity. I found conservation status was not significantly correlated with pathogen richness or severity. Pathogen severity index value was significantly, negatively correlated with pathogen richness. The taxonomic level order was found to be the best model for pathogen richness but was not significantly higher than the null model. Understanding the impacts of bacterial zoonosis on wildlife populations can help in planning for future wildlife management, particularly in species of conservation concern.
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M.S.