Reply to Alfani: Reconstructing past plague ecology to understand human history.

0582931 - ÚVGZ 2024 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Stenseth, N. C. - Bramanti, B. - Büntgen, Ulf - Fell, H. G. - Cohn, S. - Sebbane, F. - Slavin, P. - Zhang, C. - Yang, R. - Xu, L.
Reply to Alfani: Reconstructing past plague ecology to understand human history.
2023. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Roč. 120, č. 11 (2023), e2300760120. ISSN 0027-8424. E-ISSN 1091-6490
Research Infrastructure: CzeCOS IV - 90248
Institutional support: RVO:86652079
Keywords : bacterial virulence * bacterial transmission * disease reservoir * ecology * ectoparasite * enzootic disease * Europe * Pulex irritans * innate immunity * spatiotemporal analysis * Yersinia pestis
OECD category: Environmental sciences (social aspects to be 5.7)
Impact factor: 11.1, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Open access
https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2300760120

Alfani (1) provides important reflections on our recentwork, which argues against long-term wildlife-based plague reservoirs in historical Europe (2). Without natural reservoirs in Europe during the past 2,000 y, the plague bacterium
(Yersinia pestis) must have repeatedly spilled over from local-term reservoirs (3) or was introduced repeatedly from outside Europe by rodents (e.g., rats) and their ectoparasites (e.g., fleas) by infected people or contaminated
goods (Fig. 1). While recognized for the Third Pandemic in Europe (4), the hypothesis of several reintroductions of Y. pestis into Europe remains under debate for late-antique and medieval outbreaks. Two hypotheses of plague continuity
in Europe have been proposed (5): local persistence in reservoirs and external reimportation.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0350975