Multiple “spaces”: Using wildlife surveillance, climatic variables, and spatial statistics to identify and map a climatic niche for endemic plague in California, U.S.A.

Abstract

Regional climatic features in endemic areas can help inform surveillance for plague, a bacterial disease typically transmitted by fleas and maintained in mammals. We use 7,954 coyotes (Canis latrans), a sentinel species for plague, screened for plague exposure by the California Department of Public Health - Vector-Borne Disease Section (CDPH-VBDS; 1983-2015) to identify and map plague-suitable local climates within California to empirically inform ongoing sampling and surveillance plans. Using spatial point processes, we compare the distributions of seropositive and seronegative coyotes within the “space” defined by the first two principal components of PRISM Climate Group 30-year average climate variables (primarily temperature and moisture). The approach identifies both regions consistent with CDPH-VBDS mapping of plague-positive rodent and other carnivore samples over the same period and additional plague-suitable areas with climate profiles similar to seropositive samples elsewhere but little or no historical sampling, providing new data-informed insight for prioritizing limited surveillance resources.