Relative abundance of Mycobacterium bovis molecular types in cattle: a simulation study of potential epidemiological drivers

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dc.contributor.authorTrewby, Hannah
dc.contributor.authorWright, David M.
dc.contributor.authorSkuce, Robin A.
dc.contributor.authorMcCormick, Carl
dc.contributor.authorMallon, Thomas R.
dc.contributor.authorPresho, Eleanor L.
dc.contributor.authorKao, Rowland R.
dc.contributor.authorHaydon, Daniel T.
dc.contributor.authorBiek, Roman
dc.date.accessioned2021-08-05T13:12:42Z
dc.date.available2021-08-05T13:12:42Z
dc.date.issued2017-08-22
dc.descriptionPublication history: Accepted - 11 August 2017; Published online - 22 August 2017.en_US
dc.description.abstractBackground: The patterns of relative species abundance are commonly studied in ecology and epidemiology to provide insights into underlying dynamical processes. Molecular types (MVLA-types) of Mycobacterium bovis, the causal agent of bovine tuberculosis, are now routinely recorded in culture-confirmed bovine tuberculosis cases in Northern Ireland. In this study, we use ecological approaches and simulation modelling to investigate the distribution of relative abundances of MVLA-types and its potential drivers. We explore four biologically plausible hypotheses regarding the processes driving molecular type relative abundances: sampling and speciation; structuring of the pathogen population; historical changes in population size; and transmission heterogeneity (superspreading). Results: Northern Irish herd-level MVLA-type surveillance shows a right-skewed distribution of MVLA-types, with a small number of types present at very high frequencies and the majority of types very rare. We demonstrate that this skew is too extreme to be accounted for by simple neutral ecological processes. Simulation results indicate that the process of MVLA-type speciation and the manner in which the MVLA-typing loci were chosen in Northern Ireland cannot account for the observed skew. Similarly, we find that pathogen population structure, assuming for example a reservoir of infection in a separate host, would drive the relative abundance distribution in the opposite direction to that observed, generating more even abundances of molecular types. However, we find that historical increases in bovine tuberculosis prevalence and/or transmission heterogeneity (superspreading) are both capable of generating the skewed MVLA-type distribution, consistent with findings of previous work examining the distribution of molecular types in human tuberculosis. Conclusion: Although the distribution of MVLA-type abundances does not fit classical neutral predictions, our simulations show that increases in pathogen population size and/or superspreading are consistent with the pattern observed, even in the absence of selective pressures acting on the system.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipHT was funded by a BBSRC DTG studentship and Novartis Animal Health Case studentship. Molecular typing surveillance of confirmed bTB cases in NI was supported initially by DARD R&D Project DARD0407 and subsequently under the Assigned Work Programmeen_US
dc.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12518/334
dc.identifier.citationTrewby, H., Wright, D. M., Skuce, R. A., McCormick, C., Mallon, T. R., Presho, E. L., Kao, R. R., Haydon, D. T. and Biek, R. (2017) ‘Relative abundance of Mycobacterium bovis molecular types in cattle: a simulation study of potential epidemiological drivers’, BMC Veterinary Research, 13(1). doi: 10.1186/s12917-017-1190-5.en_US
dc.identifier.issn0928-4249
dc.identifier.issn1297-9716
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1186/s12917-017-1190-5
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherBMCen_US
dc.rights© The Author(s). 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided 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 Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.en_US
dc.subjectBovine Tuberculosisen_US
dc.subjectMultiple-locus variable number tandem repeatsen_US
dc.subjectNeutral theory of biodiversityen_US
dc.subjectSpecies abundance distributionsen_US
dc.subjectPopulation geneticsen_US
dc.titleRelative abundance of Mycobacterium bovis molecular types in cattle: a simulation study of potential epidemiological driversen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dcterms.dateAccepted2017-08-11
dcterms.dateSubmitted2017-03-06

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