Brucellosis Dynamics in Wildlife-Livestock Systems

Brucellosis, caused primarily by the bacterium Brucella abortus, persists at the interface between free-ranging wildlife and domestic livestock, posing economic and public health challenges worldwide. In systems where wild ungulates such as elk and bison co-occur with cattle, seasonal aggregations and shared grazing grounds facilitate pathogen transmission. Transmission pathways include direct contact during the calving season, environmental contamination by aborted foetuses or placental tissues, and indirect spread via scavengers and fomites. Host ecology—including movement patterns, group size and density—interacts with climatic drivers to shape spatial and temporal variation in disease risk. Control measures such as vaccination, test-and-slaughter, feedground management and population manipulation have had mixed success. Emerging quantitative approaches, including hierarchical and compartmental modelling, now integrate long-term serological and demographic data to assess intervention efficacy, simulate outbreak scenarios and identify critical thresholds for herd immunity. A deeper understanding of demographic heterogeneity, wildlife behaviour and landscape connectivity is essential to design adaptive management strategies that reduce spillover to livestock while conserving wildlife populations.

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Brucellosis Dynamics in Wildlife-Livestock Systems publication trend

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Technical terms

Seroprevalence: The proportion of a population with detectable antibodies against Brucella, indicating prior exposure or infection.

Spillover: The transmission of Brucella bacteria from wildlife reservoirs into domestic livestock populations.

Herd immunity: A level of population immunity at which pathogen transmission is substantially reduced, protecting susceptible individuals.

Test-and-slaughter: A management practice involving identification of seropositive animals followed by their removal to control disease spread.

Compartmental model: A mathematical framework that divides a host population into classes—such as susceptible, infected and recovered—to simulate disease dynamics.

References

1. Winter feeding of elk in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and its effects on disease dynamics. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (2018).
2. Shifting brucellosis risk in livestock coincides with spreading seroprevalence in elk. PLOS ONE (2017).
3. Mapping Brucellosis Increases Relative to Elk Density Using Hierarchical Bayesian Models. PLOS ONE (2010).
4. A multi‐scale assessment of animal aggregation patterns to understand increasing pathogen seroprevalence. Ecosphere (2014).
5. Parsing the effects of demography, climate and management on recurrent brucellosis outbreaks in elk. Journal of Applied Ecology (2020).
6. Informing adaptive management to reduce ungulate aggregations: A case study involving winter feeding of elk. Wildlife Society Bulletin (2025).