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Bridge hosts, a missing link for disease ecology in multi-host systems
Open accessAbstract
In ecology, the grouping of species into functional groups has played a valuable role in simplifying ecological complexity. In epidemiology, further clarifications of epidemiological functions are needed: while host roles may be defined, they are often used loosely, partly because of a lack of clarity on the relationships between a host's function and its epidemiological role. Here we focus on the definition of bridge hosts and their epidemiological consequences. Bridge hosts provide a link through which pathogens can be transmitted from maintenance host populations or communities to receptive populations that people want to protect (i.e., target hosts). A bridge host should (1) be competent for the pathogen or able to mechanically transmit it; and (2) come into direct contact or share habitat with both maintenance and target populations. Demonstration of bridging requires an operational framework that integrates ecological and epidemiological approaches. We illustrate this framework using the example of the transmission of Avian Influenza Viruses across wild bird/poultry interfaces in Africa and discuss a range of other examples that demonstrate the usefulness of our definition for other multi-host systems. Bridge hosts can be particularly important for understanding and managing infectious disease dynamics in multi-host systems at wildlife/domestic/human interfaces, including emerging infections.
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Most pathogens that spill over to humans have broad host ranges, so identifying a single species or taxon as the primary source is problematic.
“Most pathogens that spill over to humans have broad host ranges (24, 30, 32, 33), so identifying a single species or taxon as the primary source is problematic.”
From Impacts of biodiversity and biodiversity loss on zoonotic diseases (2021) · cites this paper as [30]
The Conclusions (page unavailable) say that Ebola, SARS, Lyme disease, and H1N1 avian influenza involve multiple hosts, and the Transmission function and bridge host section distinguishes source populations from maintenance hosts. These passages support the difficulty of reducing some spillover pathways to one host, but they do not establish that most pathogens spilling over to humans have broad host ranges. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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Metadata
- Authors
- Caron, A., Cappelle, J., Cumming, G. S., de Garine-Wichatitsky, M., & Gaidet, N.
- Affiliations
- Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (FR)
- University of Cape Town (ZA)
- Corresponding author
- Caron, Alexandre
- Venue
- Veterinary Research
- Published
- 2015-07-21
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 83-83
- ISSN
- 0928-4249 (ISSN-L)
- 1297-9716
- PMC
- PMC4509689
- OpenAlex
- W1923059478
- Cited by
- 158
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 1.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Veterinary Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ResearchOnline at James Cook University (James Cook University) (submittedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Agritrop (Cirad) (submittedVersion)
- Open University of Cape Town (University of Cape Town) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- UpSpace Institutional Repository (University of Pretoria) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Wildlife Conservation Society
- Society for Radiological Protection
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Zoonotic diseases and public health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Influenza Virus Research Studies
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Animal Science and Zoology › Animal Disease Management and Epidemiology
- Keywords
- disease ecology, multi-host systems, host role, pathogen transmission, maintenance hosts, avian influenza virus, wild birds, poultry, emerging infectious diseases, mechanical transmission, infectious disease dynamics
- MeSH terms
- Africa, Animals, Animals, Wild, Birds, Influenza in Birds, Influenza A virus, Poultry, Poultry Diseases, Host-Pathogen Interactions
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