title: Spatiotemporal dynamics of Puumala hantavirus associated with its rodent host, Myodes glareolus.
abstract: Many viruses significantly impact human and animal health. Understanding the population dynamics of these viruses and their hosts can provide important insights for epidemiology and virus evolution. Puumala virus (PUUV) is a European hantavirus that may cause regional outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome in humans. Here, we analyzed the spatiotemporal dynamics of PUUV circulating in local populations of its rodent reservoir host, the bank vole (Myodes glareolus) during eight years. Phylogenetic and population genetic analyses of all three genome segments of PUUV showed strong geographical structuring at a very local scale. There was a high temporal turnover of virus strains in the local bank vole populations, but several virus strains persisted through multiple years. Phylodynamic analyses showed no significant changes in the local effective population sizes of PUUV, although vole numbers and virus prevalence fluctuated widely. Microsatellite data demonstrated also a temporally persisting subdivision between local vole populations, but these groups did not correspond to the subdivision in the virus strains. We conclude that restricted transmission between vole populations and genetic drift play important roles in shaping the genetic structure and temporal dynamics of PUUV in its natural host which has several implications for zoonotic risks of the human population.
authors.affiliation: Computational and Molecular Population Genetics (CMPG), Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern Bern, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Vanessa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Weber de Melo
authors.affiliation: Institute for Novel and Emerging Infectious Diseases, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health Greifswald-Insel Riems, Germany ; College of Veterinary Medicine, Sudan University of Science and Technology Khartoum, Sudan.
authors.forename: Hanan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sheikh Ali
authors.affiliation: Fachbereich Schädlingsbekämpfung, Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Verbraucherschutz und Lebensmittelsicherheit Wardenburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Jona
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Freise
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Systems Science, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Denise
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kühnert
authors.affiliation: Department of Virology & Rickettsiology, Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Essbauer
authors.affiliation: Institute for Novel and Emerging Infectious Diseases, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health Greifswald-Insel Riems, Germany.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mertens
authors.affiliation: Institute for Novel and Emerging Infectious Diseases, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health Greifswald-Insel Riems, Germany.
authors.forename: Konrad M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Wanka
authors.affiliation: Institute for Novel and Emerging Infectious Diseases, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health Greifswald-Insel Riems, Germany.
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Drewes
authors.affiliation: Institute for Novel and Emerging Infectious Diseases, Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health Greifswald-Insel Riems, Germany.
authors.forename: Rainer G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Ulrich
authors.affiliation: Computational and Molecular Population Genetics (CMPG), Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern Bern, Switzerland ; Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Gerald
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Heckel
keywords: bank vole; genetic structure; hantavirus; host–parasite evolution; nephropathia epidemica; population dynamics; rodent-borne disease; zoonosis