Climate-driven host ecology as a framework for zoonotic disease risk: Understanding transferability across arenavirus systems

Abstract

Significance Climate change is reshaping the distribution and seasonality of zoonotic infectious diseases, yet mechanistic frameworks linking environmental variation to zoonotic spillover risk remain rare. We present a Bayesian framework which integrates climate-driven host population ecology into disease modeling. Applied to the Natal multimammate mouse and its associated arenaviruses, the framework recovers key transmission parameters from field data—including an empirical estimate of vertical transmission probability—and reveals how rainfall-driven recruitment pulses generate periodic infection peaks. By recalibrating the model with Nigerian climate data, predicted rodent infection dynamics reproduce the seasonality of Lassa fever outbreaks, suggesting the framework recovers key ecological insights that generalize across systems; with possible broad applicability to other climate-sensitive zoonotic disease systems.