Duikers are infected with orthopoxviruses

An increasing number of mpox cases caused by the monkeypox virus (MPXV; Orthopoxvirus monkeypox ), are reported in West and Central Africa, driven by frequent zoonotic spillovers into human populations that sometimes give rise to epidemic lineages. Designing mitigation strategies to reduce spillover requires a better understanding of the ecology underlying the zoonotic emergence of MPXV. Here, we show that orthopoxviruses, including MPXV, infect duikers, which are popular bushmeat in many mpox endemic regions. In bushmeat markets from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), we detected orthopoxvirus DNA in a Weyns's duiker ( Cephalophus weynsi ) and a common duiker ( Sylvicapra grimmia ) using PCR. High throughput sequencing (HTS) detected a small number of reads assigned to MPXV, and 25% of the genome of a close relative to the taterapox virus (TATV; Orthopoxvirus taterapox ), respectively. In the Taï National Park (TNP), Côte d’Ivoire, tissue samples from a Maxwell’s duiker ( Philantomba maxwellii ) carcass were also MPXV PCR positive, and 50% of the viral genome could be recovered. Suspecting scavenging as a route of exposure, we ran metabarcoding analyses on duiker faeces from TNP, which revealed that more than 21% contained non-duiker mammal DNA, including species linked to previous MPXV infections in this ecosystem. Revisiting western chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes verus ) diet data from an mpox outbreak in TNP in 2017, supported an epidemiological link to duiker consumption.