Interdisciplinarity and infectious diseases: an Ebola case study

High-profile epidemics such as Ebola, avian influenza, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) repeatedly thrust infectious diseases into the limelight. Because the emergence of diseases involves so many factors, the need for interdisciplinary approaches to studying emerging infections, particularly those originating from animals (i.e., zoonoses), is frequently discussed . However, effective integration across disciplines is challenging in practice. Ecological ideas, for example, are rarely considered in biomedical research, while insights from biomedicine are often neglected in ecological studies of infectious diseases. One practical reason for this is that researchers in these fields focus on vastly different scales of biological organization , which are difficult to bridge both intellectually and methodologically. Nevertheless, integration across biological scales is increasingly needed for solving the complex problems zoonotic diseases pose to human and animal well-being. Motivated by current events, we use Ebola virus as a case study to highlight fundamental questions about zoonoses that can be addressed by integrating insights and approaches across scales.