Contact Networks of Small Mammals Highlight Potential Transmission Foci of Mammarenavirus lassaense

Abstract

Lassa fever (LASV; Mammarenavirus lassaense) is an endemic zoonosis in West Africa. Human infections arise from rodent-to-human transmission, primarily from the synanthropic reservoir Mastomys natalensis (M. natalensis). In Sierra Leone, small-mammal communities vary across land-use gradients, shaping LASV transmission risk. How anthropogenic environments facilitate the rodent-rodent interactions remains poorly understood. Small mammals were sampled over 43,266 trap nights in Sierra Leone's LASV-endemic Eastern Province, detecting 684 rodents and shrews. To assess potential transmission, space-sharing networks were constructed from co-trapping events within species-specific home range radii. Shared space use was approximated in these networks, enabling the comparison of encounter patterns across habitats. Network topology varied significantly by land use. Village networks were the most connected (highest average degree), whereas agricultural communities supported the most species (higher rarefied richness) and were the most fragmented (higher modularity). Notably, the probability of intraspecific space sharing among M. natalensis was highest in agricultural settings, suggesting that land use modulates key intraspecific transmission pathways. Lassa fever seroprevalence was 5.7% community-wide, with antibodies detected in nine species. No statistically significant association was found between overall seroprevalence and land use or aggregate network structure (mean degree). However, predictive modeling for M. natalensis indicated that a higher individual degree is associated with seropositivity, suggesting complex, scale-dependent relationships. These findings reveal that simple ecological drivers do not fully explain LASV exposure, highlighting the importance of species-specific behaviors (i.e., M. natalensis clustering in agriculture) and the multihost serological landscape in assessing transmission risk.