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Science 8 December 2006:
Vol. 314. no. 5805, p. 1564
DOI: 10.1126/science.1133105
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Brevia

Ebola Outbreak Killed 5000 Gorillas

Magdalena Bermejo,1,2* José Domingo Rodríguez-Teijeiro,2 Germán Illera,1 Alex Barroso,2 Carles Vilà,3 Peter D. Walsh4

Over the past decade, the Zaire strain of Ebola virus (ZEBOV) has repeatedly emerged in Gabon and Congo. Each human outbreak has been accompanied by reports of gorilla and chimpanzee carcasses in neighboring forests, but both the extent of ape mortality and the causal role of ZEBOV have been hotly debated. Here, we present data suggesting that in 2002 and 2003 ZEBOV killed about 5000 gorillas in our study area. The lag between neighboring gorilla groups in mortality onset was close to the ZEBOV disease cycle length, evidence that group-to-group transmission has amplified gorilla die-offs.

1 Ecosystèmes Forestiers d'Afrique Centrale (ECOFAC), Box Postale 15115 Libreville, Gabon.
2 Department of Animal Biology, University of Barcelona, ES-08028 Barcelona, Spain.
3 Department of Evolutionary Biology, Uppsala University, SE-752 36 Uppsala, Sweden.
4 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: magda_bermejo{at}yahoo.es

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)