ArticleEcology letters2021
Quantifying 25 years of disease-caused declines in Tasmanian devil populations: host density drives spatial pathogen spread.
Article in Ecology letters, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed.
- Identification of expressed endogenous retroviral element associated long terminal repeats in devil facial tumour cells.Open biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Metabolic pathways fuelling devil facial tumour diseases.The FEBS journal · 2026Article
- Tyrosine kinase targeting uncovers oncogenic pathway plasticity in Tasmanian devil transmissible cancers.The EMBO journal · 2026Article
- Synthesizing selection mosaic theory and host-pathogen theory to explain large-scale pathogen coexistence.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Boost or Bust? The Impact of Supplementation on Functional Genetic Diversity and Selective Processes in Tasmanian Devils.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Temporal Changes in Tasmanian Devil Genetic Diversity at Sites With and Without Supplementation.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- The Devil Is in the Details: Assessing Temporal Changes in Genetic Diversity Across Managed and Unmanaged Sites.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- The devil in more detail: Eco-evolutionary genomics of Tasmanian devil persistence despite range-wide spread of a fatal, transmissible cancer.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Range-Wide Assessment of the Tasmanian Devil Gut Microbiome.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Life-history trade-offs and reproductive strategies in Tasmanian devils following disease-induced population decline.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Land use influences the faecal glucocorticoid metabolites of multiple species across trophic levels.Conservation physiology · 2025Article
- Differentially expressed growth factors and cytokines drive phenotypic changes in transmissible cancers.Discovery immunology · 2025Article
- Reintroduction of resistant frogs facilitates landscape-scale recovery in the presence of a lethal fungal disease.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Adaptive potential in the face of a transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils.Molecular ecology · 2024Article
- No evidence that a transmissible cancer has shifted from emergence to endemism in Tasmanian devils.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Human habitat modification, not apex scavenger decline, drives isotopic niche variation in a carnivore community.Oecologia · 2024Article
- Intergenomic signatures of coevolution between Tasmanian devils and an infectious cancer.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- In vitro competition between two transmissible cancers and potential implications for their host, the Tasmanian devil.Evolutionary applications · 2024Article
- The devil is in the detail.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Infectious diseases are strong drivers of wildlife population dynamics, however, empirical analyses from the early stages of pathogen emergence are rare. Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease (DFTD), discovered in 1996, provides the opportunity to study an epizootic from its inception. We use a pattern-oriented diffusion simulation to model the spatial spread of DFTD across the species' range and quantify population effects by jointly modelling multiple streams of data spanning 35 years. We estimate the wild devil population peaked at 53 000 in 1996, less than half of previous estimates. DFTD spread rapidly through high-density areas, with spread velocity slowing in areas of low host densities. By 2020, DFTD occupied >90% of the species' range, causing 82% declines in local densities and reducing the total population to 16 900. Encouragingly, our model forecasts the population decline should level-off within the next decade, supporting conservation management focused on facilitating evolution of resistance and tolerance.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.