Affiliation:
1. Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis CEES, University of Oslo, Norway
2. Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases CMMID, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT, UK
3. Norwegian Veterinary Institute, Ås, Norway
Abstract
Modern plague outbreaks exhibit a distinct seasonal pattern. By contrast, the seasonality of historical outbreaks and its drivers has not been studied systematically. Here, we investigate the seasonal pattern, the epidemic peak timing and growth rates, and the association with latitude, temperature, and precipitation using a large, novel dataset of plague- and all-cause mortality during the Second Pandemic in Europe and the Mediterranean. We show that epidemic peak timing followed a latitudinal gradient, with mean annual temperature negatively associated with peak timing. Based on modern temperature data, the predicted epidemic growth of all outbreaks was positive between 11.7°C and 21.5°C with a maximum around 17.3°C. Hence, our study provides evidence that the growth of plague epidemics across the whole study region depended on similar absolute temperature thresholds. Here, we present a systematic analysis of the seasonality of historical plague in the Northern Hemisphere, and we show consistent evidence for a temperature-related process influencing the epidemic peak timing and growth rates of plague epidemics.
Funder
Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), University of Oslo
Norges Forskningsråd
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine
Cited by
7 articles.
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