No evidence for avoidance of visibly diseased conspecifics in the highly social banded mongoose (Mungos mungo)
No evidence for avoidance of visibly diseased conspecifics in the highly social banded mongoose (Mungos mungo)
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DOI：
10.1007/s00265-014-1849-x
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发表时间：
2015-03-01
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
Alexander, Kathleen A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fairbanks, Bonnie M.;Hawley, Dana M.;Alexander, Kathleen A.
个体宿主行为可能会受到传染病的影响，从而改变群体水平的疾病动态。在博茨瓦纳东北部的带状猫鼬（Mungos mungo）中出现了结核分枝杆菌复合体中的一种新病原体，即孟氏分枝杆菌。这种宿主-病原体系统提供了一个研究群体生活物种中的个体行为和社会互动如何应对传染病的机会。我们对具有广泛行为特征的已知个体进行了重复的重点观察，以确定健康个体与具有结核病（TB）临床体征的个体之间的行为差异和社会互动。与健康个体相比，临床患病的带状猫鼬表现出明显较小的活动和警觉时间比例，较大比例的休息时间，以及较慢的行为转变率。他们还表现出约50%的allorooming低回报。尽管这些强烈的行为差异可能作为健康猫鼬避免患病同种的可见线索，但我们没有发现健康个体避免临床患病猫鼬的证据，反之亦然：临床患病个体的社会行为水平并不比健康个体低，临床患病猫鼬在预期水平上被异毛化，尽管它们的互惠性降低。我们的研究结果表明，与其他物种的先前研究相比，避免患病同种没有发生在这个高度社会化的物种。我们讨论了这种缺乏避免和病原体传播的潜在影响的假设。
Individual host behavior may be influenced by infectious disease in ways that can alter population-level disease dynamics. A novel pathogen in the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, Mycobacterium mungi, has emerged among banded mongooses (Mungos mungo) in Northeastern Botswana. This host-pathogen system provides an opportunity to study how individual behavior and social interactions in a group-living species might respond to infectious disease. We used repeated focal observations of known individuals with an extensive ethogram to identify behavioral differences and social interactions between healthy individuals and those with clinical signs of tuberculosis (TB). Clinically diseased banded mongooses exhibited a significantly smaller proportion of time active and alert, a larger proportion of time resting, and a slower behavioral transition rate compared to healthy individuals. They also showed lower reciprocation of allogrooming by approximately 50 %. Despite these strong behavioral differences that may serve as visible cues for healthy mongooses to avoid diseased conspecifics, we found no evidence for avoidance of clinically diseased mongooses by healthy individuals or vice versa: Clinically diseased individuals did not have lower levels of social behaviors than healthy individuals, and clinically diseased mongooses were allogroomed at the expected level despite their decreased reciprocation. Our results show that in contrast to prior studies of other species, avoidance of diseased conspecifics did not occur in this highly social species. We discuss hypotheses for this lack of avoidance and potential implications for pathogen transmission.