The sylvatic cycle, also enzootic or sylvatic transmission cycle, is a portion of the natural transmission cycle of a pathogen. ('Sylvatic' means 'occurring in or affecting wild animals'.) The sylvatic cycle is the fraction of the pathogen population's lifespan spent cycling between wild animals and vectors. Humans are usually an incidental or dead-end host, infected by a vector. This is opposed to an "domestic", or "urban", cycle, in which the pathogen cycles between vectors and non-wild, urban, or domestic animals; humans may have differing infection rates from these cycles due to transmission efficiencies and environmental exposure levels.
Examples of pathogens that contain a sylvatic cycle include trichinosis, dengue viruses, Yersinia pestis, and Chagas disease
Famous quotes containing the word cycle:
“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)