Chinese scientists shed light on how animals ‘run away’ from deadly viruses
Researchers from China find healthy organisms can outpace infected counterparts to leave them behind in a ‘migratory culling’
They found that healthy organisms could outpace their infected counterparts, eventually leaving them behind in a process known as “migratory culling”.
There are two conflicting views on the effect of migration on the spread of a virus. While it is generally believed that host migration accelerates the spread of infectious diseases, some recent ecological studies suggest the opposite can be true – migration may actually inhibit viral spread in some cases.
A new study by researchers in southern China offers new insight into this contradiction.
The team from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT), an affiliate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that when a host species ran around aimlessly – the faster the movement, the wider the spread of the virus.
Conversely, if the movement of the animal population was directed and fast enough, the virus would be “weeded out”.
The study by Fu Xiongfei of SIAT’s Key Laboratory of Quantitative Synthetic Biology and colleagues was published last Tuesday in the international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
