Plague and Climate: Scales Matter
Open accessAbstract
Plague is enzootic in wildlife populations of small mammals in central and eastern Asia, Africa, South and North America, and has been recognized recently as a reemerging threat to humans. Its causative agent Yersinia pestis relies on wild rodent hosts and flea vectors for its maintenance in nature. Climate influences all three components (i.e., bacteria, vectors, and hosts) of the plague system and is a likely factor to explain some of plague's variability from small and regional to large scales. Here, we review effects of climate variables on plague hosts and vectors from individual or population scales to studies on the whole plague system at a large scale. Upscaled versions of small-scale processes are often invoked to explain plague variability in time and space at larger scales, presumably because similar scale-independent mechanisms underlie these relationships. This linearity assumption is discussed in the light of recent research that suggests some of its limitations.
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Microclimatic drivers like temperature, rainfall, relative humidity and climate changes in general are expected to largely modify the future dispersion of plague and of flea-borne disease.
“Given that warm and moist weather are factors beneficial for flea development, microclimatic drivers like temperature, rainfall, relative humidity and climate changes in general, are expected to largely modify the future dispersion of plague and of flea-borne disease [69].”
From Fleas infesting pets in the era of emerging extra-intestinal nematodes (2013) · cites this paper as [69]
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References 69 · Cited by 183
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- [44]Parmenter RR Yadav EP Parmenter C Ettestad P Gage KL 1999 Incidence of plague associated with increased winter-spring precipitation in New Mexico. Am J Trop Med Hyg 61 814 821 10586917
- Authors
- Ben Ari, T., Neerinckx, S., Gage, K. L., Kreppel, K., Laudisoit, A., Leirs, H., & Stenseth, N. C.
- Affiliations
- University of Oslo (NO)
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US)
- University of Liverpool (GB)
- University of Antwerp (BE)
- Corresponding author
- Stenseth, Nils Chr.
- Venue
- PLoS Pathogens
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2011-09-15
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- e1002160
- ISSN
- 1553-7366 (ISSN-L)
- 1553-7374
- PMC
- PMC3174245
- OpenAlex
- W2081564896
- Cited by
- 183
- References
- 69
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 30 · 2015: 15 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 0.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2012-05-07)
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS Pathogens (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Zoonotic diseases and public health
- Keywords
- plague, Yersinia pestis, climate effects, small mammals, rodent hosts, flea vectors, zoonoses, re-emerging infectious diseases, scale dependence, upscaling, spatiotemporal variation
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Climate, Environment, Siphonaptera, Humans, Insect Vectors, Plague, Rodentia, Temperature, Yersinia pestis, Host-Pathogen Interactions
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