Figure 4

The zoonotic niche and the outbreak of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. (A,B) Inferred bare carrying capacity as obtained by the regression model and Köppen-Geiger climate classification map respectively: Af: equatorial rainforest; Am: equatorial monsoon (Land cover index 2 in Table 1); As and Aw are equatorial savannas with dry summer and dry winter, respectively (Land cover index 8 and 9 in Table 1). The confirmed cases of Ebola virus infection in humans in Sierra-Leone, Liberia and Guinea in December 2013 are indicated by means of red squares. The initial location of the outbreak, Meliandou, is highlighted by a black circle. For the sake of comparison, the gray diamond at Lon: −8.00°, Lat: 13.00° pinpoints the location of Bamako where K₀ was low when the outbreak started. (C,D) Density of total and infected bats respectively. The predicted habitat area for bats extends beyond the region classified as rainforest according to the Köppen-Geiger climate classification⁴⁵ where fruit bats mainly assemble: cf. (B,C) Map images were generated using R software packages “maps”, “gdal” and “raster”^55,56,57.