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The Ecology of Emerging Infectious Diseases in Migratory Birds: An Assessment of the Role of Climate Change and Priorities for Future Research

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Abstract

Pathogens that are maintained by wild birds occasionally jump to human hosts, causing considerable loss of life and disruption to global commerce. Preliminary evidence suggests that climate change and human movements and commerce may have played a role in recent range expansions of avian pathogens. Since the magnitude of climate change in the coming decades is predicted to exceed climatic changes in the recent past, there is an urgent need to determine the extent to which climate change may drive the spread of disease by avian migrants. In this review, we recommend actions intended to mitigate the impact of emergent pathogens of migratory birds on biodiversity and public health. Increased surveillance that builds upon existing bird banding networks is required to conclusively establish a link between climate and avian pathogens and to prevent pathogens with migratory bird reservoirs from spilling over to humans.

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Acknowledgments

We thank three anonymous reviewers for comments that improved the manuscript. This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network Migration Interest Group: Research Applied Toward Education. JN was funded by the NSF (Grant number 0933731) and the Searle Scholars Program. JP was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (CGL2007-62937/BOS). JW was funded by the Swedish Research Council FORMAS (221-2008-326). SB was funded by the Swedish Research Council (621-2007-5193). TBS and TF were funded by the joint NSF-National Institutes of Health Ecology of Infectious Diseases Program (Grant number EF-0430146), by US Environmental Protection Agency grant (R 833778), and by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Grant number EID-1R01AI074059-01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Tropical Research, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, 619 Charles E. Young Dr. East, La Kretz Hall, Suite 300, Box 951496, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1496, USA

    Trevon Fuller & Thomas B. Smith

  2. Department of Ecology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Staffan Bensch

  3. Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Vogelwarte Radolfzell, Radolfzell, Germany

    Inge Müller

  4. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    John Novembre & Thomas B. Smith

  5. Interdepartmental Program in Bioinformatics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    John Novembre

  6. Departamento de Zoología y Antropología Física, Facultad de Biología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Javier Pérez-Tris

  7. Department of Biology, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Robert E. Ricklefs

  8. Section for Zoonotic Ecology and Epidemiology, School of Natural Sciences, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden

    Jonas Waldenström

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  1. Trevon Fuller
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  2. Staffan Bensch
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  3. Inge Müller
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  4. John Novembre
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  5. Javier Pérez-Tris
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  6. Robert E. Ricklefs
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  7. Thomas B. Smith
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  8. Jonas Waldenström
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Correspondence to Trevon Fuller.

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Fuller, T., Bensch, S., Müller, I. et al. The Ecology of Emerging Infectious Diseases in Migratory Birds: An Assessment of the Role of Climate Change and Priorities for Future Research. EcoHealth 9, 80–88 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-012-0750-1

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