Transdisciplinary Approach to Surveillance for Wildlife Health Epidemiology

Dear Colleagues,

Throughout history, emerging diseases and their rapid or insidious spread have plagued societies. The global panic that has led to major financial and social consequences also illustrates the disappearance of boundaries between countries and continents working to protect their citizens. Most emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, that is, caused by pathogens shared between humans and animals. These diseases cause tens of thousands of deaths a year and the economic losses from a single outbreak can amount to tens of billions of dollars. Despite increased recognition of the importance of zoonotic diseases, little attention has been paid to advancing the understanding of the underlying causes of their occurrence and the factors that drive their spread. A growing transdisciplinary community has responded to this gap in knowledge about disease dynamics by advocating a more holistic or "One Health" approach, which recognizes the need to broaden disciplinary knowledge in public health. Since the inception of the One Health movement, there has been strong advocacy for an approach that considers all public, animal and environmental aspects of health as a problem solving paradigm.  Despite philosophical acceptance of the need for such an approach, the animal and environmental underpinnings of this triangle often receive only superficial attention when addressing major health problems in policy and practice. While prevention and early control of outbreaks may be the key to reducing the impact of epidemics and potential pandemics, the world is still positioned only to respond and not to prevent.

The aim of this Special Issue is to provide an innovative and transdisciplinary view on surveillance in the epidemiology of wildlife infections and their potential impact on global health. Manuscripts focusing on the epidemiology and surveillance of infectious and zoonotic diseases in wildlife, the identification and characterisation of new microbial species in wildlife, their interspecies transmission, pathogenic mechanisms, host immune response and global health impact assessments are welcome.

Authors are encouraged to present original research, but high-quality reviews will also be considered.

Dr. David González-Barrio
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• wildlife
• zoonosis
• One Health
• surveillance