Abstract
Infectious diseases constitute one of the major threats to African great apes. Bonobos (Pan paniscus) may be particularly vulnerable to the transmission of infectious diseases because of their cohesive grouping and frequent social and sexual interactions between groups. Here we report two cases of a flu-like illness and possible transmission of the illness among neighboring wild bonobo groups at Wamba, DR Congo. The first flu-like outbreak started in the PE group on July 28, 2013, 2 days after they had encounters with the BI and PW groups. All PE members, except for one infant, subsequently developed flu-like symptoms, including coughing and running nose. The second flu-like outbreak occurred in the E1 group on October 14, 2013, after E1 had encountered the PE group and the two groups stayed together from October 7 to 11. Eleven out of the 15 observed party members developed symptoms over the next 4 days. The pathogens underlying the two outbreaks may have been related as two temporary immigrant females, who had previously shown symptoms while in the PE group, stayed briefly in the E1 group during the second outbreak, but did not show any symptoms.
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Acknowledgements
We thank our research assistants at Wamba for their great help and members of the Department of Ecology and Social Behavior and CICASP of the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University for their support. We thank in particular Dr. Hirofumi Akari, Dr. Andrew J.J. MacIntosh, M.D. Hyeongjin Park, and D.V.M. Haerim Lee for valuable comments on the manuscript. We also thank the handling editor and the two reviewers of this paper for their valuable comments and advice. We finally thank the Research Center of Ecology and Forestry of the DR Congo for helping us and for maintaining the Luo Scientific Reserve. This study was supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (D-1007 to Furuichi), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grants-in-aid for Scientific Research (22255007 to Furuichi, 25257407 to T. Yumoto, 25257409 to H. Ihobe, 25304019 to C. Hashimoto), the JSPS Asia-Africa Science Platform Program (2012-2014 to Furuichi), Long-term Field Study Project of MEXT special grant (Human evolution to T. Matsuzawa, KUPRI), JSPS Strategic Young Overseas Visits Program for Accelerating Brain Circulation (S2508 to H. Hirai). JSPS ITP-HOPE Project (ITP-25-004 to Garai and ITP-24-008 to Tokuyama) and JSPS Research Fellowships for Young Scientist (13J00535 to Tokuyama).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by HR, TS, CG. The first draft of the manuscript was written by HR and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Ryu, H., Hill, D.A., Sakamaki, T. et al. Occurrence and transmission of flu-like illness among neighboring bonobo groups at Wamba. Primates 61, 775–784 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-020-00832-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-020-00832-3