Roche Benjamin auteur aut IRD Benbow M. E. auteur aut IRD Merritt R. auteur aut IRD Kimbirauskas R. auteur aut IRD McIntosh M. auteur aut IRD Small P. L. C. auteur aut IRD Williamson H. auteur aut IRD Guégan Jean-François auteur aut IRD text journalArticle eng text/pdf reformatted digital access Pathogens that use multiple host species are an increasing public health issue due to their complex transmission, which makes them difficult to mitigate. Here, we explore the possibility of using networks of ecological interactions among potential host species to identify the particular disease-source species to target to break down transmission of such pathogens. We fit a mathematical model on prevalence data of Mycobacterium ulcerans in western Africa and we show that removing the most abundant taxa for this category of pathogen is not an optimal strategy to decrease the transmission of the mycobacterium within aquatic ecosystems. On the contrary, we reveal that the removal of some taxa, especially Oligochaeta worms, can clearly reduce rates of pathogen transmission, and these should be considered as keystone organisms for its transmission because they lead to a substantial reduction in pathogen prevalence regardless of the network topology. Besides their potential application for the understanding of M. ulcerans ecology, we discuss how networks of species interactions can modulate transmission of multi-host pathogens. specialized multi-host pathogen disease transmission ecological network keystone host local community 052 082 8 4 art. 045009 2013 1748-9326 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010061460 10.1088/1748-9326/8/4/045009 1748-9326 [F B010061460] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010061460 https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/divers15-11/010061460.pdf IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2014-03-03 2019-12-13 fdi:010061460 fre