Towards understanding the impacts of environmental variation on Echinococcus multilocularis transmission

Abstract

Concluding remarks: A key element in disease emergence/re-emergence is ecosystem disruption as a result of anthropogenic effects which may be as rapid as in forestry and agricultural changes. There is however difficulty in developing suitable models to study ecology of infectious diseases, wherein spatial determinants that meaningfully characterize wildlife reservoir habitat, can be linked in turn to host ecology and to dynamics of pathogen/parasite transmission. Spatial variables in the form of landscape and socio-economic characteristics should be linked to parasite transmission dynamics using an integrated modeling approach that takes into account multi-level heterogeneity at habitat, host and parasite domains and deterministic transmission parameters. The diversity of small mammals host communities and landscape worldwide offer a number of systems that sustain transmission of E. multilocularis at various time-space scales. It is expected that further advances will come from methods combining quantification of host communities from field surveys, landscape via remote sensing and parasite transmission via population screenings conducted on definitive hosts (e.g. dogs in villages in China or foxes in Europe) and humans, in a spatially explicit context. The combination of multi-level field approaches with modern regression techniques coupled with traditional transmission models provide a unique opportunity of investigating how a diversity of small mammal communities and anthropogenic landscapes can regulate parasite transmission.