Dataset Information

Social buffering and contact transmission: network connections have beneficial and detrimental effects on Shigella infection risk among captive rhesus macaques.

ABSTRACT: In social animals, group living may impact the risk of infectious disease acquisition in two ways. On the one hand, social connectedness puts individuals at greater risk or susceptibility for acquiring enteric pathogens via contact-mediated transmission. Yet conversely, in strongly bonded societies like humans and some nonhuman primates, having close connections and strong social ties of support can also socially buffer individuals against susceptibility or transmissibility of infectious agents. Using social network analyses, we assessed the potentially competing roles of contact-mediated transmission and social buffering on the risk of infection from an enteric bacterial pathogen (Shigella flexneri) among captive groups of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Our results indicate that, within two macaque groups, individuals possessing more direct and especially indirect connections in their grooming and huddling social networks were less susceptible to infection. These results are in sharp contrast to several previous studies that indicate that increased (direct) contact-mediated transmission facilitates infectious disease transmission, including our own findings in a third macaque group in which individuals central in their huddling network and/or which initiated more fights were more likely to be infected. In summary, our findings reveal that an individual's social connections may increase or decrease its chances of acquiring infectious agents. They extend the applicability of the social buffering hypothesis, beyond just stress and immune-function-related health benefits, to the additional health outcome of infectious disease resistance. Finally, we speculate that the circumstances under which social buffering versus contact-mediated transmission may occur could depend on multiple factors, such as living condition, pathogen-specific transmission routes, and/or an overall social context such as a group's social stability.

SUBMITTER: Balasubramaniam K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5088628 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Social buffering <i>and</i> contact transmission: network connections have beneficial and detrimental effects on <i>Shigella</i> infection risk among captive rhesus macaques.

Balasubramaniam Krishna K Beisner Brianne B Vandeleest Jessica J Atwill Edward E McCowan Brenda B

PeerJ 20161027

In social animals, group living may impact the risk of infectious disease acquisition in two ways. On the one hand, social connectedness puts individuals at greater risk or susceptibility for acquiring enteric pathogens via contact-mediated transmission. Yet conversely, in strongly bonded societies like humans and some nonhuman primates, having close connections and strong social ties of support can also socially buffer individuals against susceptibility or transmissibility of infectious agents. ...[more]

PMID: 27812426

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Project description:In group-living animals, heterogeneity in individuals' social connections may mediate the sharing of microbial infectious agents. In this regard, the genetic relatedness of individuals' commensal gut bacterium Escherichia coli may be ideal to assess the potential for pathogen transmission through animal social networks. Here we use microbial phylogenetics and population genetics approaches, as well as host social network reconstruction, to assess evidence for the contact-mediated sharing of E. coli among three groups of captively housed rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta), at multiple organizational scales. For each group, behavioral data on grooming, huddling, and aggressive interactions collected for a six-week period were used to reconstruct social network communities via the Data Cloud Geometry (DCG) clustering algorithm. Further, an E. coli isolate was biochemically confirmed and genotypically fingerprinted from fecal swabs collected from each macaque. Population genetics approaches revealed that Group Membership, in comparison to intrinsic attributes like age, sex, and/or matriline membership of individuals, accounted for the highest proportion of variance in E. coli genotypic similarity. Social network approaches revealed that such sharing was evident at the community-level rather than the dyadic level. Specifically, although we found no links between dyadic E. coli similarity and social contact frequencies, similarity was significantly greater among macaques within the same social network communities compared to those across different communities. Moreover, tests for one of our study-groups confirmed that E. coli isolated from macaque rectal swabs were more genotypically similar to each other than they were to isolates from environmentally deposited feces. In summary, our results suggest that among frequently interacting, spatially constrained macaques with complex social relationships, microbial sharing via fecal-oral, social contact-mediated routes may depend on both individuals' direct connections and on secondary network pathways that define community structure. They lend support to the hypothesis that social network communities may act as bottlenecks to contain the spread of infectious agents, thereby encouraging disease control strategies to focus on multiple organizational scales. Future directions includeincreasing microbial sampling effort per individual to better-detect dyadic transmission events, and assessments of the co-evolutionary links between sociality, infectious agent risk, and host immune function.

Dataset Information

Social buffering and contact transmission: network connections have beneficial and detrimental effects on Shigella infection risk among captive rhesus macaques.

Publications

Social buffering <i>and</i> contact transmission: network connections have beneficial and detrimental effects on <i>Shigella</i> infection risk among captive rhesus macaques.

Similar Datasets

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