Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Animal Diseases
A modeling lens on landscapes-of-peril and other ecological drivers of zoonoses
Published: 2026-07-31
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences
Ecological systems are driven by a complex suite of environmental conditions, interactions among individuals, and reciprocal behavioral and biological responses of organisms to the ecosystems they inhabit. Individuals may, in turn, reshape those systems, generating feedback that alters the ecological drivers influencing subsequent system dynamics. Extractive and competitive processes are embedded [...]
Composite virulence: useful metric or conceptual trap?
Published: 2026-02-20
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Animal Experimentation and Research, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, Life Sciences, Medical Microbiology, Microbiology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Parasitic Diseases, Parasitology, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Pathology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Virulence, defined as the harm an infection causes to its host, is central to evolutionary ecology, yet it remains difficult to quantify because infection impact is multidimensional, dynamic, and context-dependent. Composite measures have therefore emerged to summarise multiple traits into a single estimate of infection-induced harm. However, every composite embeds biological assumptions about [...]
From patterns to predictions: A framework for the spatial epidemiology of wildlife diseases
Published: 2025-12-08
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Epidemiology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Population Biology, Statistics and Probability, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health, Zoology
Wildlife diseases pose a significant threat to public health, livestock, and biodiversity conservation. In this context, spatial epidemiology offers a robust framework for elucidating disease dynamics and informing policy-making and disease management. The workflow in spatial epidemiology involves three main steps: (1) descriptive analysis of spatial dynamics; (2) exploration of the observed [...]
Screwworm re-emergence, illegal cattle movements, and emerging risks to wildlife and protected areas in Mesoamerica
Published: 2025-07-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Diseases, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Entomology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Parasitic Diseases, Parasitology, Public Health, Veterinary Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health
New World Screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax), eradicated from North and Central America through decades of Sterile Insect Technique programs, has re-emerged across Mesoamerica with alarming speed. Following a surge in Panama in 2023, the parasite spread northward through Central America, reaching Mexico by late 2024. Nearly 100,000 domestic animal cases and hundreds of human cases have since [...]
A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance
Published: 2024-05-19
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitic Diseases, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Virology, Virus Diseases
Rapid and comprehensive data sharing is vital to the transparency and actionability of wildlife infectious disease research and surveillance. Unfortunately, most best practices for publicly sharing these data are focused on pathogen determination and genetic sequence data. Other facets of wildlife disease data – particularly negative results – are often withheld or, at best, summarized in a [...]
A call to action: Understanding land use-induced zoonotic spillover to protect environmental, animal, and human health
Published: 2020-09-25
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Biology, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Parasitic Diseases, Public Health, Systems Biology, Veterinary Medicine
The rapid, global spread and human health impacts of SARS-CoV-2, the agent of COVID-19 disease, demonstrates humanity’s vulnerability to zoonotic disease pandemics. Although anthropogenic land use change is known to be the major driver of zoonotic pathogen spillover from wildlife to human populations, the scientific underpinnings of land use-induced zoonotic spillover have rarely been [...]