Rats and the city: Implications of urbanization on zoonotic disease risk in Southeast Asia ...
(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Urbanization is rapidly transforming much of Southeast Asia, altering the structure and function of the landscape, as well as the frequency and intensity of the interactions between people, animals, and the environment. In this study, we explored th...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
Zenodo
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13514834 https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13514834 |
| Summary: | (Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Urbanization is rapidly transforming much of Southeast Asia, altering the structure and function of the landscape, as well as the frequency and intensity of the interactions between people, animals, and the environment. In this study, we explored the impact of urbanization on zoonotic disease risk by simultaneously characterizing changes in the ecology of animal reservoirs (rodents), ectoparasite vectors (ticks), and pathogens across a gradient of urbanization in Kuching, a city in Malaysian Borneo. We sampled 863 rodents across rural, developing, and urban locations and found that rodent species diversity decreased with increasing urbanization—from 10 species in the rural location to 4 in the rural location. Notably, two species appeared to thrive in urban areas, as follows: the invasive urban exploiter Rattus rattus ( n = 375) and the native urban adapter Sundamys muelleri ( n = 331). R. rattus was strongly associated with built infrastructure across the ... |
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