Volume 10, Number 1—January 2004
Research
Ecologic and Geographic Distribution of Filovirus Disease
Figure 4

Figure 4. Preliminary exploration of patterns of ecologic variation along the modeled distributional limits (highest confidence level) for Ebola viruses in central Africa. The histograms represent relative values of Mann-Whitney U-tests for inside versus outside the prediction area for temperature (red bars), precipitation (blue bars), and elevation (green bars).
1Although filovirus taxonomy undergoes frequent revision, we follow nomenclature most recently established by the International Committee of Taxonomy of Viruses in 2002. Filoviruses consist of two genera. The genus Marburgvirus contains one species, Lake Victoria marburgvirus, with several recognized strains, and Ebolavirus contains four species: Ivory Coast ebolavirus, Reston ebolavirus, Sudan ebolavirus, and Zaire ebolavirus. For simplicity, we refer to the viruses using the unitalicized vernacular (e.g., Ebola Zaire). We use “Ebola viruses” to refer in general to members of Ebolavirus and “Marburg viruses” to refer in general to members of Marburgvirus. The diseases caused by filoviruses are termed Ebola hemorrhagic fever (HF; diseases caused by Ebola viruses) and Marburg HF (diseases caused by Marburg viruses).