Fig. 1.

Approach to developing multilayer TPNs that link wildlife, livestock, and human populations across Nairobi by sharing of E. coli–borne MGEs. (A) Bipartite network linking animal and human host compartments with their MGE communities. (B–D) Pairwise comparisons of shared MGEs, grouped by the putative epidemiological role of each host group within a multispecies framework for urban disease emergence. For each member of taxon_i, a matrix of shared MGEs was created with all individuals of taxon_j and used to generate a bipartite network. Each bipartite network was projected to a weighted unipartite network (multilayer transmission potential network—mTPN). (E) This effectively nested each member of taxon_i within an mTPN including all members of taxon_j and enabled us to compare the relative importance of individual hosts in sharing bacterial genes across taxonomic interfaces. (F) Centrality and distance-based network statistics that best captured pairwise sharing of MGEs between each individual and all other wildlife hosts within each mTPN, were then used to represent transmission potential for each individual host.