dc.contributor.author | Neerinckx, Simon B. | |
dc.contributor.author | Peterson, A. Townsend | |
dc.contributor.author | Gulinck, Hubert | |
dc.contributor.author | Deckers, Jozef | |
dc.contributor.author | Leirs, Herwig | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2010-08-17T14:24:27Z | |
dc.date.available | 2010-08-17T14:24:27Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2008-10-23 | |
dc.identifier.citation | Neerinckx, S. B., A. T. Peterson, H. Gulinck, J. Deckers, and H. Leirs. 2008. Geographic distribution and ecological niche of plague in sub-Saharan Africa. International Journal of Health Geographics 7:54 online. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1476-072X-7-54 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1808/6530 | |
dc.description | doi:10.1186/1476-072X-7-54 | |
dc.description.abstract | Background: Plague is a rapidly progressing, serious illness in humans that is likely to be fatal if
not treated. It remains a public health threat, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In spite of plague's
highly focal nature, a thorough ecological understanding of the general distribution pattern of
plague across sub-Saharan Africa has not been established to date. In this study, we used human
plague data from sub-Saharan Africa for 1970–2007 in an ecological niche modeling framework to
explore the potential geographic distribution of plague and its ecological requirements across
Africa.
Results: We predict a broad potential distributional area of plague occurrences across sub-
Saharan Africa. General tests of model's transferability suggest that our model can anticipate the
potential distribution of plague occurrences in Madagascar and northern Africa. However,
generality and predictive ability tests using regional subsets of occurrence points demonstrate the
models to be unable to predict independent occurrence points outside the training region
accurately. Visualizations show plague to occur in diverse landscapes under wide ranges of
environmental conditions.
Conclusion: We conclude that the typical focality of plague, observed in sub-Saharan Africa, is not
related to fragmented and insular environmental conditions manifested at a coarse continental
scale. However, our approach provides a foundation for testing hypotheses concerning focal
distribution areas of plague and their links with historical and environmental factors. | |
dc.language.iso | en | |
dc.publisher | BioMed Central | |
dc.title | Geographic distribution and ecological niche of plague in sub-Saharan Africa | |
dc.type | Article | |
kusw.kuauthor | Peterson, A. Townsend | |
kusw.oastatus | fullparticipation | |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1186/1476-072X-7-54 | |
kusw.oaversion | Scholarly/refereed, publisher version | |
kusw.oapolicy | This item meets KU Open Access policy criteria. | |
dc.rights.accessrights | openAccess | |