Plague in prairie dog colonies under scenarios of climate change

I will preset a simulation study aimed at investigating the effect of a changed climate on the occurrence of plague among colonies of black-tailed prairie dogs. Predictions are made using simulations of a Bayesian hierarchical space-time model of the joint dynamics of prairie dog colonies and plague. The climate-driven model has been fitted to long-term data on the occurrence of plague and prairie dog colonies in a landscape in Montana. The model suggests that increasing precipitation in the previous year increase the rate of plague transmission, while the number of hot days in the focal summer decreases this rate. Future climatic conditions for the study landscape have been estimated using statistical down-scaling of predictions given by a set of global circulation models. These climatic conditions are within the range empirically observed. Preliminary results suggest that there will be no general change in the yearly number of infected colonies during the late 21st century. However, the modes of some prediction distributions of the number of infected colonies are considerably higher for some years than has ever been observed in the study landscape.