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Ecological niche and geographic distribution of human monkeypox in Africa
Levine, Rebecca S. Peterson, A. Townsend Yorita, Krista L. Carroll, Darin S. Damon, Inger K. Reynolds, Mary G.
Levine, Rebecca S.
Peterson, A. Townsend
Yorita, Krista L.
Carroll, Darin S.
Damon, Inger K.
Reynolds, Mary G.
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Abstract
Monkeypox virus, a zoonotic member of the genus Orthopoxviridae, can cause a severe, smallpox-like illness in humans.
Monkeypox virus is thought to be endemic to forested areas of western and Central Africa. Considerably more is known about
human monkeypox disease occurrence than about natural sylvatic cycles of this virus in non-human animal hosts. We use
human monkeypox case data from Africa for 1970–2003 in an ecological niche modeling framework to construct predictive
models of the ecological requirements and geographic distribution of monkeypox virus across West and Central Africa. Tests of
internal predictive ability using different subsets of input data show the model to be highly robust and suggest that the
distinct phylogenetic lineages of monkeypox in West Africa and Central Africa occupy similar ecological niches. High mean
annual precipitation and low elevations were shown to be highly correlated with human monkeypox disease occurrence. The
synthetic picture of the potential geographic distribution of human monkeypox in Africa resulting from this study should
support ongoing epidemiologic and ecological studies, as well as help to guide public health intervention strategies to areas at
highest risk for human monkeypox.
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doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000176
Date
2007-01-31
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Public Library of Science
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Levine, R. S., A. T. Peterson, K. L. Yorita, D. Carroll, I. K. Damon, and M. G. Reynolds. 2007. Ecological niche and geographic distribution of human monkeypox in Africa. PLoSONE 2:e176. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000176