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Geographic distribution and ecological niche of plague in sub-Saharan Africa

Neerinckx, Simon B.
; 
Peterson, A. Townsend
; 
Gulinck, Hubert
; 
Deckers, Jozef
; 
Leirs, Herwig
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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.
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doi:10.1186/1476-072X-7-54
Date
2008-10-23
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BioMed Central
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Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Scholarly Works
Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum Scholarly Works
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Scholarly Works
Distinguished Professors Scholarly Works
Kansas African Studies Center Scholarly Works
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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
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https://hdl.handle.net/1808/6530
DOI
10.1186/1476-072X-7-54
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