Scully, Erik J;
Liu, Weimin;
Li, Yingying;
Ndjango, Jean-Bosco N;
Peeters, Martine;
Kamenya, Shadrack;
Pusey, Anne E;
... Wrangham, Richard W; + view all
(2022)
The ecology and epidemiology of malaria parasitism in wild chimpanzee reservoirs.
Communications Biology
, 5
, Article 1020. 10.1038/s42003-022-03962-0.
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Abstract
Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) harbor rich assemblages of malaria parasites, including three species closely related to P. falciparum (sub-genus Laverania), the most malignant human malaria parasite. Here, we characterize the ecology and epidemiology of malaria infection in wild chimpanzee reservoirs. We used molecular assays to screen chimpanzee fecal samples, collected longitudinally and cross-sectionally from wild populations, for malaria parasite mitochondrial DNA. We found that chimpanzee malaria parasitism has an early age of onset and varies seasonally in prevalence. A subset of samples revealed Hepatocystis mitochondrial DNA, with phylogenetic analyses suggesting that Hepatocystis appears to cross species barriers more easily than Laverania. Longitudinal and cross-sectional sampling independently support the hypothesis that mean ambient temperature drives spatiotemporal variation in chimpanzee Laverania infection. Infection probability peaked at ~24.5 °C, consistent with the empirical transmission optimum of P. falciparum in humans. Forest cover was also positively correlated with spatial variation in Laverania prevalence, consistent with the observation that forest-dwelling Anophelines are the primary vectors. Extrapolating these relationships across equatorial Africa, we map spatiotemporal variation in the suitability of chimpanzee habitat for Laverania transmission, offering a hypothetical baseline indicator of human exposure risk.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The ecology and epidemiology of malaria parasitism in wild chimpanzee reservoirs |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s42003-022-03962-0 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-03962-0 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Animals, Cross-Sectional Studies, DNA, Mitochondrial, Hominidae, Humans, Malaria, Malaria, Falciparum, Pan troglodytes, Phylogeny, Plasmodium |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10157126 |
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