Climate-driven host ecology as a framework for zoonotic disease risk: Understanding transferability across arenavirus systems.

Climate-driven host ecology model predicts rodent and virus dynamics, accurately forecasting Lassa fever outbreak peaks with 83% precision across systems.

• Why it matters: Understanding how climate influences zoonotic disease transmission is crucial for predicting and preventing outbreaks, yet mechanistic frameworks are scarce and often system-specific.
• What they did: A Bayesian framework combining rodent demography and disease transmission models was applied to data from Mastomys natalensis and Lassa virus, estimating climatic, demographic, and transmission parameters, then tested on Nigerian outbreak data without refitting.
• The result: Predicted subadult infection peaks preceded outbreaks by nearly one month, outperforming rainfall or demographic models, and demonstrating the framework's transferability, which can inform broader climate-sensitive zoonotic risk assessments.