Risk of disease spillover from dogs to wild carnivores in Kanha Tiger Reserve, India

V. Chaudhary; N. Rajput; A. B. Shrivastav; D. W. Tonkyn

Cuddeback, Greenbay, WI, USA, 54115) near carcasses of livestock killed by tigers. We 125 recorded the geographical location of each carnivore encounter and collected only once from 126 each location to avoid duplication. This method provides a minimum estimate of the contact rate, 127 since many carnivores are nocturnal and can enter villages undetected. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It . https://doi.org/10.1101/360271 doi: bioRxiv preprint (White, 2008) . Since, the dogs are territorial (Pal, 2003) and our surveys were conducted over 132 two or three consecutive days in each village, we assumed the individual populations were 133 closed during survey. Also, since we used non-invasive means to identify dogs, we assumed 134 there was no loss of marks and no change in behavior following the first "capture". Using 135 CAPTURE, we compared four models that differ in their assumptions of capture probability: that We used Fisher's two-tailed exact test to examine the relation between seroprevalence of 148 each pathogen and sex and age category of the dogs, and also to test non-random patterns of co-149 exposure. We tested for the difference in seroprevalence for near and far villages (only for 150 winter). We calculated odds ratio (OR) for all significant relationships, which tells the likelihood 151 of seroprevalence given the presence or absence of other conditions, here, the sex and age class 152 of the dogs, and the presence of other pathogens. All analyses were conducted using SAS (SAS 153 The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It . https://doi.org/10.1101/360271 doi: bioRxiv preprint