Data from: Population structure of two rabies hosts relative to the known distribution of rabies virus variants in Alaska ...

• Main Authors: Goldsmith, Elizabeth W., Renshaw, Benjamin, Clement, Christopher J., Himschoot, Elizabeth A., Hundertmark, Kris J., Hueffer, Karsten
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2015
• Subjects: Vulpes lagopus; Boreal; Tundra; Holocene; disease transmission; Arctic; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dc1q8; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.dc1q8

For pathogens that infect multiple species the distinction between reservoir hosts and spillover hosts is often difficult. In Alaska, three variants of the arctic rabies virus exist with distinct spatial distributions. We test the hypothesis that rabies virus variant distribution corresponds to the population structure of the primary rabies hosts in Alaska, arctic foxes (Vulpes lagopus) and red foxes (V. vulpes) in order to possibly distinguish reservoir and spill over hosts. We used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence and nine microsatellites to assess population structure in those two species. mtDNA structure did not correspond to rabies virus variant structure in either species. Microsatellite analyses gave varying results. Bayesian clustering found 2 groups of arctic foxes in the coastal tundra region, but for red foxes it identified tundra and boreal types. Spatial Bayesian clustering and spatial principal components analysis identified 3 and 4 groups of arctic foxes, respectively, closely matching the ... : Goldsmith et al fox dataDNA sequence data and microsatellite genotypes for red and arctic foxes, a Newick tree file of rabies virus variants from Alaska, and two Arlequin project files for data analysis.Goldsmith_et_al_fox_data_12_15.zip ...