Urban-adapted mammal species have more known pathogens
Albery G, Carlson C, Cohen L, Eskew E, Gibb R, Ryan S, Sweeny A, Becker D. Urban-adapted mammal species have more known pathogens. Nature Ecology & Evolution 2022, 6: 794-801. PMID: 35501480, DOI: 10.1038/s41559-022-01723-0.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchConceptsParasite richnessIncreased zoonotic disease riskUrban-adapted speciesWildlife disease dynamicsZoonotic disease riskSampling biasUrban mammalsMammal speciesDocumented parasitismFrequent contact with humansAnthropogenic changesGeographic predictorsParasite discoveryRichnessUrban animalsHost-parasite combinationsInvestigated speciesContact with humansDisease dynamicsZoonotic parasitesUrban environmentSpeciesMounting concernMammalsParasitesAssessing the risk of human‐to‐wildlife pathogen transmission for conservation and public health
Fagre A, Cohen L, Eskew E, Farrell M, Glennon E, Joseph M, Frank H, Ryan S, Carlson C, Albery G. Assessing the risk of human‐to‐wildlife pathogen transmission for conservation and public health. Ecology Letters 2022, 25: 1534-1549. PMID: 35318793, PMCID: PMC9313783, DOI: 10.1111/ele.14003.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchConceptsNon-human primatesPathogen transmissionThreatened animalsThreaten conservationHuman healthRisk assessmentHuman pathogensPrimatesIncreasing concernSampling biasPublic healthConservationTransmission of pathogensDocumented examplesPathogensEvidence of sampling biasTransmission eventsHuman parasitesWildlifeMammal virus diversity estimates are unstable due to accelerating discovery effort
Gibb R, Albery G, Mollentze N, Eskew E, Brierley L, Ryan S, Seifert S, Carlson C. Mammal virus diversity estimates are unstable due to accelerating discovery effort. Biology Letters 2022, 18: 20210427. PMID: 34982955, PMCID: PMC8727147, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2021.0427.Peer-Reviewed Original ResearchConceptsViral richnessHost speciesReliability of ecological inferenceGeographic sampling biasEvidence of declineViral diversityHost-virus associationsRearrangement of speciesSampling effortVirus discovery ratesEcological inferenceDiscovery effortsMammal hostsWild mammalsDiversity estimatesSampled hostsVirus diversityShort-term changesRichnessSampling biasSpeciesAssociation dataDiscovery rateDiversityCompare inferences