Abstract
Zoonotic pathogens pose a significant risk to human health, with spillover into human populations contributing to chronic disease, sporadic epidemics, and occasional pandemics. Despite the widely recognized burden of zoonotic spillover, our ability to identify which animal populations serve as primary reservoirs for these pathogens remains incomplete. This challenge is compounded when prevalence reaches detectable levels only at specific times of year. In these cases, statistical models designed to predict the timing of peak prevalence could guide field sampling for active infections. Thus, we develop a general model that leverages routinely collected serosurveillance data to optimize sampling for elusive pathogens by predicting time windows of peak prevalence. Using simulated data sets, we show that our methodology reliably identifies times when pathogen prevalence is expected to peak. Then, we demonstrate an implementation of our method using publicly available data from two putative Ebolavirus reservoirs, straw-colored fruit bats (Eidolon helvum) and hammer-headed bats (Hypsignathus monstrosus). We envision our method being used to guide the planning of field sampling to maximize the probability of detecting active infections, and in cases when longitudinal data is available, our method can also yield predictions for the times of year that are most likely to produce future spillover events. The generality and simplicity of our methodology make it broadly applicable to a wide range of putative reservoir species where seasonal patterns of birth lead to predictable, but potentially short-lived, pulses of pathogen prevalence.