Sylvatic Plague

New records of sylvatic plague in Kansas.

Sylvatic plague, or plague of wild rodents is caused by Yersinia pestis and entered California (USA) from Asia about 1899. Extensive sampling during the 1930's and 1940's documented the spread of plague to approximately its current distribution in North America. Records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document plague in Kansas (USA) between 1945 and 1950, but since then ther...

fade-out of sylvatic plague in Kazakhstan

Received Accepted Emergence, spread, persistence and fade-out of sylvatic plague in Kazakhstan Lise Heier1, Geir O. Storvik1,2, Stephen A. Davis3, Hildegunn Viljugrein1,4, Vladimir S. Ageyev5, Evgeniya Klassovskaya6 and Nils Chr. Stenseth1,* Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biology, University of Oslo, PO Box 1066 Blindern, 0316 Oslo, Norway Department of M...

Interspecific Comparisons of Sylvatic Plague in Prairie Dogs

Of the 3 major factors (habitat loss, poisoning, and disease) that limit abundance of prairie dogs today, sylvatic plague caused by Yersinia pestis is the 1 factor that is beyond human control. Plague epizootics frequently kill .99% of prairie dogs in infected colonies. Although epizootics of sylvatic plague occur throughout most of the range of prairie dogs in the United States and are well de...

A Search for Latent Sylvatic Plague in Calcutta

Empirical assessment of a threshold model for sylvatic plague.

Plague surveillance programmes established in Kazakhstan, Central Asia, during the previous century, have generated large plague archives that have been used to parameterize an abundance threshold model for sylvatic plague in great gerbil (Rhombomys opimus) populations. Here, we assess the model using additional data from the same archives. Throughout the focus, population levels above the thre...