Thursday, August 9, 2007 - 9:20 AMCOS 100-5: Contact network on Tasmanian devils: Implications for transmission dynamics of the Devil Facial Tumour Disease
Rodrigo K. Hamede, Hamish McCallum, and Menna E. Jones. University of Tasmania
The transmission and spread of directly transmitted diseases is the result of the social interactions of susceptible and infected individuals. Contact network epidemiology characterizes interpersonal contacts within a community and provides key parameters for assessing the dynamics of infectious diseases. The Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) is a lethal and directly transmitted cancer that is affecting over 59% of the devil’s distributional range with reported local population declines of up to 89%. Empirical epidemiological data is required urgently to inform disease control strategies. We described the social network structure and contact patterns of wild devils during key behavioral and reproductive seasons in a disease free population in northern Tasmania. We used Proximity Loggers (Sirtrack NZ), a new telemetric technology specifically designed for studying wildlife diseases. Proximity loggers interrogate each individual carrying a logger at a pre-programmed distance. The adult collared population of wild devils is consistently interconnected during mating and pouch young seasons. The number and length of intersexual contacts is higher than intrasexual contacts but the number of individuals encountered is higher outside the mating season. Younger females appeared to have a higher number of sexual partners than older females; in males the opposite pattern was observed. We suggest targeting disease control strategies previous mating season, the time of the year in which the potential for disease transmission is higher.