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

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

The potential of disease spillover from dogs to carnivores in KTR is significant as dogs 217 are present in large numbers, are exposed to infectious viruses, and come in direct or indirect 218 contact with carnivores. The average number of dogs in KTR villages that were sampled in both 219 seasons, was 21 in summer and 17 in winter in case of near villages, and in the far villages there 220 were 29 dogs in summer and 27 dogs in winter. The seroprevalence of CPV, CDV, and CAV 221 represents the proportion of the population that were exposed to those viruses at some point and The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder.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 Canine rabies is a serious public health concern in India where dog cause 91.5 % of the 246 15 million animal bites and where 20,000 people die of rabies annually (36% of the world total) 247 (WHO 2016, Knobel et al. 2005) . Rabies transmission from dogs therefore likely poses a serious 248 threat to carnivores in India but was not detected in our study because it is highly and quickly 249 lethal (Tepsumethanon et al., 2004) . However, most dogs had been exposed to CPV (83.6% particular are bigger threat as they are more prone to suffer from high mortality, malnutrition, 307 and disease (Sowemimo, 2009 ). Very few dogs photographed in summer were re-sighted in 308 winter in our survey, possibly due to high mortality of these dogs. Our study does not 309 incorporate any seroprevalence data from feral dogs, which may be higher along with the 310 associated mortality. Feral dogs may have more frequent contact with carnivores making them a 311 greater unknown threat. 312