The potential role of wild and feral animals as reservoirs of foot-and-mouth disease

We investigated the potential role of feral pigs and wild deer as FMD reservoirs with a susceptible–latent–infected–recovered geographic-automata model, using spatially referenced data from southern Texas, USA. An uncontrolled FMD outbreak initiated in feral pigs and in wild deer might infect up to 698 (90% prediction interval 181, 1387) and 1557 (823, 2118) cattle and affect an area of 166 km2 (53, 306) and 455 km2 (301, 588), respectively. The predicted spread of FMD virus infection was influenced by assumptions we made regarding the number of incursion sites and the number of neighborhood interactions between herds. Our approach explicitly incorporates the spatial relationships between domesticated and non-domesticated animal populations, providing a new framework to explore the impacts, costs, and strategies for the control of foreign animal diseases with a potential wildlife reservoir.