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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
agricultural and biological sciences
Rate of intersexual interactions affects injury likelihood in Tasmanian devil contact networks
Behavioral Ecology, Volume 30, No. 4, Year 2019
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Description
Identifying the types of contacts that result in disease transmission is important for accurately modeling and predicting transmission dynamics and disease spread in wild populations. We investigated contacts within a population of adult Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) over a 6-month period and tested whether individual-level contact patterns were correlated with accumulation of bite wounds. Bite wounds are important in the spread of devil facial tumor disease, a clonal cancer cell line transmitted through direct inoculation of tumor cells when susceptible and infected individuals bite each other. We used multimodel inference and network autocorrelation models to investigate the effects of individual-level contact patterns, identities of interacting partners, and position within the social network on the propensity to be involved in bite-inducing contacts. We found that males were more likely to receive potentially disease-transmitting bite wounds than females, particularly during the mating season when males spend extended periods mate-guarding females. The number of bite wounds individuals received during the mating season was unrelated to any of the network metrics examined. Our approach illustrates the necessity for understanding which contact types spread disease in different systems to assist the management of this and other infectious wildlife diseases. © 2019 The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved.
Authors & Co-Authors
Jones, Menna E.
Australia, Hobart
University of Tasmania
Cameron, Elissa Z.
Australia, Hobart
University of Tasmania
New Zealand, Christchurch
University of Canterbury
McCallum, Hamish Ian
Australia, Brisbane
Griffith University
Hohenlohe, Paul A.
United States, Moscow
University of Idaho
Statistics
Citations: 18
Authors: 4
Affiliations: 5
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1093/beheco/arz054
ISSN:
10452249
Research Areas
Cancer
Violence And Injury
Study Design
Cross Sectional Study
Participants Gender
Female