Infectious Disease Ecology of Wild Birds

Disease ecology is an interdisciplinary field that recognizes that the host–parasite interaction is shaped by the environment and can affect and be affected by the processes that occur across all levels of ecological organization. This book focuses on the dynamics of infectious diseases for wild avian hosts across different scales of biological organization—from within-host processes to landscape-level patterns. Parasite–bird interactions are both influenced by and have consequences for every level of ecological hierarchy, from the physiology, behavior, and evolution of individual hosts up to the complex biotic and abiotic interactions occurring within biological communities and ecosystems. As the most diverse group of extant vertebrates, birds have evolved to utilize every ecological niche on earth, giving them the capacity to serve as a host of pathogens in every part of the world. The diversity of birds is outmatched only by the diversity of the parasite fauna infecting them. Given the overwhelming diversity of both avian hosts and their parasites, we have only scratched the surface regarding the role that pathogens play in avian biology and the role that birds play in the maintenance and spread of zoonotic pathogens. In addition to this understudied diversity, parasite–bird interactions are increasingly occurring in rapidly changing global environments—thus, their ecology is changing—and this shapes the complex ways by which parasites influence the interconnected health of birds, humans, and shared ecosystems. The chapters in this book illustrate that the understanding of these complex and multiscale interactions requires an inherently integrative approach.