Sociality and kinship constrain the free-mixing of pathogens in a wild mammal host population

Benton, Clare H and Delahay, Richard and Shih, Barbara and Kao, Rowland R. and McDonald, Robbie A. and Hodgson, Dave J (2025) Sociality and kinship constrain the free-mixing of pathogens in a wild mammal host population. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 292 (2051): 20251242. ISSN 0962-8452

Abstract

Pathogens rarely mix freely throughout host populations, and the presence of barriers to transmission can be detected as patterns of increased genetic isolation among pathogen isolates. Despite the importance of transmission patterns in host societies, and the risk of epizootics from wildlife disease systems, barriers to open pathogen transmission are poorly understood in wild hosts. We tested the influence of host kinship and social structure on genetic divergence among strains of Mycobacterium bovis, the causative agent of bovine tuberculosis (bTB), in a wild badger population. We measured genetic distances between M. bovis isolates from badger hosts that varied in their own genetic similarity (a proxy for kinship) and in their social group affiliations. Using jack-knifing analyses to control for pseudoreplication, we found that genetic distances between pathogen isolates decreased with increasing kinship of host dyads, but only when hosts shared the same social group. Our findings suggest that the open transmission of bTB in wild hosts is constrained by a combination of social and kin structure, in particular the sharing of similar pathogen strains among kin within social groups. We discuss the implications of these transmission structures for the understanding and management of wildlife diseases.