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Adding Wild Boar Behaviour Produced Secondary ASF Waves in a Landscape Transmission Model

Adult wild boar and juvenile moving through dry grassland in India
Research · Disease, parasites & microbiology

A South Korean landscape model of African swine fever (ASF) in wild boar (Sus scrofa) produced markedly different epidemic patterns when it explicitly tracked where individual animals and infections occurred. The study compared a model that included wild-boar behavioural processes with a version in which those processes were switched off.

Wild boar can help sustain African swine fever circulation through contacts among animals and through infected carcasses that remain in the environment. That makes movement, aggregation and carcass persistence biologically important when models are used to predict where and when transmission will intensify.

Wild-boar behaviour produced secondary infection waves

When foraging, home-range movement, relocation and aggregation were included, the model generated secondary infection waves and kept the effective reproduction number higher during the intermediate phase. This number describes how many new infections one infection produces under the conditions at that point in the epidemic. By contrast, the behaviour-off version produced one main epidemic peak rather than recurrent waves.

The model linked wild-boar bioenergetics and demography to a heterogeneous landscape, allowing individuals to acquire energy from resources, move within or relocate their home ranges and interact with other animals. Disease transmission also included infected carcasses and their persistence in the environment, an important route by which ASF can remain available for further transmission.

Behaviour also sharpened the spatial pattern of risk

Including behavioural processes improved the model’s ability to distinguish higher- from lower-risk locations. High-risk areas formed patch-like clusters that were consistent with the spatial distribution of observed ASF-positive carcasses used for comparison.

The authors conclude that landscape structure can shape disease spread through its effects on wild-boar aggregation, movement and contact. By combining these processes with carcass-mediated transmission, the model identified spatially concentrated risk areas that could be used to target surveillance, carcass removal and population-management efforts.

Sources and image credit

  1. Hwang, H., Rossberg, A. G., Kim, D., Hwang, I., Kim, E. S., Jeon, Y., Kim, J., Park, B. J., Jang, S. Y., & Lee, D. K. (2026). African swine fever spread in wild boars shaped by landscape and population processes. Ecological Informatics, 95, 103763.Primary peer-reviewed study first published online 9 April 2026. The article is CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, so its figures are not reused on Wildlife Vagabond.

Image: Saumitra Newalkar — adult wild boar and juvenile photographed in India, 30 June 2016; representative image, not animals from the ASF model study. Source: Wikimedia Commons. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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