🎓Urban health ecology and biodiversity at the interface between animal and human health: Dynamics of zoonoses in urban and peri-urban areas

The transmission of infectious diseases from animals to humans is the result of natural evolutionary processes and adaptation mechanisms of pathogens, vectors and hosts to new habitat conditions created by human activities, such as changes in land use, livestock farming, misuse of antimicrobial drugs and the introduction of exotic species. In urban habitats, factors such as biodiversity loss and climate change disrupt the ecology of pathogens and trigger mechanisms for pathogen adaptation and their potential transmission to humans.

Urban areas encompass many ecological and social elements where dense animal and human populations converge with close and frequent interactions. Consequently, exposure to spillover pathogens depends on the location and frequency of these interactions, as well as human behaviour, which is determined by socioeconomic factors, social norms and community dynamics. These complex dynamics at the environment-animal-human interface and the processes of infectious diseases are not yet fully understood. Therefore, the prediction and prevention of emerging zoonoses must be addressed in research through the analysis of socio-ecological systems in combination with health and environmental aspects within the framework of "One Health".