Domestic Lagomorph Cases and Developed Land Cover Are Associated with Higher Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus 2...

Understanding the factors that influence wildlife disease spread can help inform monitoring and mitigation efforts. Rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus 2 (RHDV2) infection is a highly contagious viral disease that is usually fatal for rabbit and hare species. We obtained RHDV2 infection case counts for wild lagomorph species from 2020-24 across 14 USA states, from a publicly available USA Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service dataset. We used Bayesian conditional autoregressive models to assess the effects of land cover, domestic RHDV2 infection case counts, and environmental factors on wild RHDV2 infection case counts. Our findings suggested that wild RHDV2 cases were positively related to RHDV2 cases in domestic lagomorphs, developed land cover, and lower annual precipitation. These results can be used to target RHDV2 surveillance in wild lagomorphs to urban areas where RHDV2 has been detected in domestic lagomorphs. Overall, our study provides insights into where surveillance could be prioritized to better understand the spread of RHDV2 into new areas.