Land Use and West Nile Virus Seroprevalence in Wild Mammals

Abstract

We examined West Nile virus (WNV) seroprevalence in wild mammals along a forest-to-urban gradient in the US mid-Atlantic region. WNV antibody prevalence increased with age, urbanization, and date of capture for juveniles and varied significantly between species. These findings suggest several requirements for using mammals as indicators of transmission.

Keywords

• Land use
• disease
• urbanization
• serology
• Sciurus carolinensis
• indicator species