Abstract

Rabies is a globally prevalent viral zoonosis that causes 59,000 deaths per year and has important economic consequences. Most virus spread is associated with the migration of its primary hosts. Anthropogenic dissemination, mainly via the transportation of rabid dogs, shaped virus ecology a few hundred years ago and is responsible for several current outbreaks. A systematic analysis of aberrant long-distance events in the steppe and Arctic-like groups of rabies virus was performed using statistical (Bayesian) phylogeography and plots of genetic vs. geographic distances. The two approaches produced similar results but had some significant differences and complemented each other. No phylogeographic analysis could be performed for the Arctic group because polar foxes transfer the virus across the whole circumpolar region at high velocity, and there was no correlation between genetic and geographic distances in this virus group. In the Arctic-like group and the steppe subgroup of the cosmopolitan group, a significant number of known sequences (15–20%) was associated with rapid long-distance transfers, which mainly occurred within Eurasia. Some of these events have been described previously, while others have not been documented. Most of the recent long-distance transfers apparently did not result in establishing the introduced virus, but a few had important implications for the phylogeographic history of rabies. Thus, human-mediated long-distance transmission of the rabies virus remains a significant threat that needs to be addressed.

Highlights

  • Introduction published maps and institutional affilRabies virus (RABV) is a negative-sense ssRNA virus belonging to the genus Lyssavirus.A number of lyssaviruses can cause a lethal disease called rabies [1]

  • Calculation of a Bayesian phylogeographical framework grows with the number The genome coverage plot indicated fragments were evenlyof of sequences and is not practical for suchthat large datagenome sets

  • To further highlight the capacity of the two methods, known and suggestive “transferred” sequences were omitted from the data sets by excluding sequences identical in over 99.7% nucleotide positions and collected at distances of over 500 km

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Summary

Introduction

Introduction published maps and institutional affilRabies virus (RABV) is a negative-sense ssRNA virus belonging to the genus Lyssavirus.A number of lyssaviruses can cause a lethal disease called rabies [1]. Rabies virus (RABV) is a negative-sense ssRNA virus belonging to the genus Lyssavirus. RABV is the only lyssavirus adapted to long-term circulation, in bats and in other mammals, mainly carnivores. Such adaptation is the reason why RABV causes the vast majority of human cases of rabies, with around 59,000 deaths annually [2]. RABV consists of bat-associated and carnivore-associated phylogenetic groups. Carnivore-associated RABV may be found in every continent except Australia and the Antarctic [3] and consists of several phylogenetic groups: Cosmopolitan, Africa-3, Arctic-related, Africa-2, Asian, and Indian [3,4,5]

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