Global change and biodiversity loss as drivers for zoonotic disease emergence: study cases in the Italian Alps

The ecology of wildlife diseases is a multidisplinary field of study that interfaces host and pathogen ecology, epidemiology, veterinary science and mathematical and statistical modelling. This area of research acknowledges the complex role of diseases in shaping ecosystem dynamics: on the one side, pathogens and parasites are a fundamental, and sometime overlooked driver of species evolution and ecological adaptations of populations. On the other hand, changes in abundance and distribution of host and reservoir populations affects the persistence, occurrence and emergence of diseases. The recent emergence or upsurge of viral infections, also of zoonotic interest, has been linked to climatic and landuse changes that have rapidly altered the balance between hosts, vectors and pathogens; in parallel, the sudden local or regional decrease of population abundance of certain wildlife species, to the point of pushing them to the risk of local extinction, have been put in relation to a variety of factors, such as habitat loss, parasite-mediated apparent competition, and upsurge of diseases. In this talk, I will present some study cases from the empirical essays and mathematical modelling our research group have undertaken for the last >10 yrs in the Alpine environment, which is undergoing an unprecedentedly rapid change under the current climate and global change threats