Bidirectional pathogen transmission among humans and nonhuman primates on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi

Modern political, social and economic forces are creating new contexts for human-nonhuman primate interaction, creating the possibility of cross-species pathogen transmission. This “hybrid” dissertation examines three facets of cross-species pathogen transmission on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The first manuscript presents evidence that wild macaques on Sulawesi are exposed to human pathogen such as measles virus, influenza A and parainfluenza 1, 2 and 3. The second manuscript describes a specific context of human-nonhuman primate contact, namely the ownership of pet primates in Sulawesi, and discusses the implications for cross-species disease transmission. The third manuscript presents data on seroprevalence of a number of enzootic primate pathogens in 129 wild-caught primates, 107 of which were currently being kept as pets. Taken together, this research suggests the potential for ongoing pathogen transmission from humans to nonhuman primates as well as from nonhuman primates to humans on Sulawesi. These data have profound implications both for the conservation of nonhuman primate populations and for the health of human populations that come into contact with nonhuman primates. This dissertation presages a new approach to the study of cross-species disease transmission, an approach that synthesizes serologic data from both human and nonhuman primate populations with data on interspecies interactions. This approach is anticipated to provide a powerful tool to ultimately design interventions to mitigate the dangers of cross-species disease transmission for both humans and nonhuman primates.