A big-data spatial, temporal and network analysis of bovine tuberculosis between wildlife (badgers) and cattle
Authored by Aristides Moustakas, Matthew R Evans
Date Published: 2017
DOI: 10.1007/s00477-016-1311-x
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Mathematical description
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Abstract
Bovine tuberculosis (TB) poses a serious threat for agricultural
industry in several countries, it involves potential interactions
between wildlife and cattle and creates societal problems in terms of
human-wildlife conflict. This study addresses connectedness network
analysis, the spatial, and temporal dynamics of TB between cattle in
farms and the European badger (Meles meles) using a large dataset
generated by a calibrated agent based model. Results showed that
infected network connectedness was lower in badgers than in cattle. The
contribution of an infected individual to the mean distance of disease
spread over time was considerably lower for badger than cattle; badgers
mainly spread the disease locally while cattle infected both locally and
across longer distances. The majority of badger-induced infections
occurred when individual badgers leave their home sett, and this was
positively correlated with badger population growth rates. Point pattern
analysis indicated aggregation in the spatial pattern of TB prevalence
in badger setts across all scales. The spatial distribution of farms
that were not TB free was aggregated at different scales than the
spatial distribution of infected badgers and became random at larger
scales. The spatial cross correlation between infected badger setts and
infected farms revealed that generally infected setts and farms do not
coexist except at few scales. Temporal autocorrelation detected a two
year infection cycle for badgers, while there was both within the year
and longer cycles for infected cattle. Temporal cross correlation
indicated that infection cycles in badgers and cattle are negatively
correlated. The implications of these results for understanding the
dynamics of the disease are discussed.
Tags
Individual Based Models
Infection
Spatial Analysis
Risk
Meles-meles
Great-britain
Pattern-formation
Republic-of-ireland
European badgers
Density population
Data availability
Model
complexity
Network connectedness
Point pattern analysis
Veterinary epidemiology
Temporal correlation