Identifying the Most Probable Mammal Reservoir Hosts for Monkeypox Virus Based on Ecological Niche Comparisons.

Figure 1: Ecological niches of Monkeypox virus (A) and the four mammal species showing the best overlap with it: Funisciurus anerythrus (C), Graphiurus lorraineus (D), Funisciurus pyrropus (E), and Heliosciurus rufobrachium (F). Black circles indicate localities used to build the distribution model. The probabilities of occurrence (p) are highlighted using different colours: blue grey for probabilities < 0.5; turquoise green for 0.5 < p < 0.75; yellowish green for 0.75 < p < 0.9; and yellow for p > 0.9. The red line is the IUCN distribution of the species [60 ]. Indicated at the left of the maps are the number of occurrence records (n) used to infer the ecological niche, and the Schoener’s D and Hellinger’s I values summarizing niche overlap between mammal species and MPXV. For convenience, we have included a map (B) showing the major biogeographic barriers, such as the Dahomey gap, rivers, and Cameroon volcanic line (CVL), and African rainforests (B), including the Upper Guinean forests (UGF) and Lower Guinean forests (LGF) in West Africa, the Atlantic Equatorial coastal forests (AECF) and Congolian lowland forests (CLF) in Central Africa, and the Eastern African coastal forests (EACF) in East Africa.