Home – Home – Jornals – Contemporary Problems of Ecology 2014 number 1

Modern phylogenies of plague agent Yersinia pestis (Logh.), built with the help of molecular genetic methods, do not provide satisfactory functional adaptation explanation and do not have enough ecological validity. An ecological scenario of the origin of the plague agent was proposed: original pseudotuberculous bacterium Yersinia pseudotuberculosis O:1b had moved to an unoccupied ecological niche (and a new adaptive zone) under ultra-continental climatic conditions of the late Pleistocene (Sartan Ice Age, 22–15 thousand years ago) on the territory of South Siberia and Central Asia. Intervening media, a parasitic system “tarbagan Marmota sibirica – flea Oropsylla silantiewi ” in which the genesis and adaptation of the plague agent had taken place, was characterized. This scenario, based on the main principles of modern evolutionary synthesis, opens the way to ecological-genetic synthesis in regard to the problem of plague origin. It also provides a fine model for developing of the theory of molecular evolution of pathogenic microorganisms.