Abstract
Bluetongue virus (BTV) epidemics are responsible for worldwide economic losses of up to US$ 3 billion. Understanding the global evolutionary epidemiology of BTV is critical in designing intervention programs. Here we employed phylodynamic models to quantify the evolutionary characteristics, spatiotemporal origins, and multi-host transmission dynamics of BTV across the globe. We inferred that goats are the ancestral hosts for BTV but are less likely to be important for cross-species transmission, sheep and cattle continue to be important for the transmission and maintenance of infection between other species. Our models pointed to China and India, countries with the highest population of goats, as the likely ancestral country for BTV emergence and dispersal worldwide over 1000 years ago. However, the increased diversification and dispersal of BTV coincided with the initiation of transcontinental livestock trade after the 1850s. Our analysis uncovered important epidemiological aspects of BTV that may guide future molecular surveillance of BTV.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 21677 |
| Journal | Scientific reports |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was partially funded by Kuwait University vice president office of academic affairs. Also, the study was partially funded by the H2020 EU project ‘Understanding pathogen, livestock, environment interactions involving bluetongue’ (project No: 727393-2). Cecilia Aguilar-Vega is the recipient of a Spanish Government-funded PhD fellowship for the Training of Future Scholars (FPU) given by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Author(s).
