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Ecological Intelligence

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Ecological Intelligence / Subject

Disease ecology

Europe

Honey-bee virus recombinants are showing up inside collapsed colonies without a simple parent-virus story

Evidence
Peer-reviewed metatranscriptomic / long-read sequencing study
Geography
Three Central European apiaries with winter-collapsed colonies
System
Managed pollinator / agroecosystem

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Metatranscriptomics of pooled dead bees and targeted Nanopore sequencing of individual bees identified five recombinant deformed-wing-virus variants built on a DWV-B backbone with DWV-A-derived sequence in the 5′/leader-protein region. Some individuals carried recombinants without detectable parental variants, and individual bees could carry multiple recombinants.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

This is worth watching because viral population structure may shift faster than routine colony-level diagnostics capture. Long-read sequencing can reveal within-host recombinant diversity that pooled presence/absence tests hide.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

Detection of a recombinant genome does not demonstrate independent viral replication, and this study does not show that recombinants caused the colony collapses. Only three apiaries were examined, Varroa status was incompletely resolved, and winter loss is multifactorial.

SOURCE

Scientific Reports — primary study
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Long-read sequencing in three apiaries found five DWV-B/DWV-A recombinant variants, including individual bees where recombinants were detected without one or both parental variants.

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Latin America & Caribbean

Forest configuration may change zoonotic risk in ways forest area alone does not

Evidence
Peer-reviewed observational landscape epidemiology
Geography
Brazilian Atlantic Forest municipalities
System
Atlantic Forest / agricultural mosaics

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Using municipality-level Brazilian spotted-fever incidence from 2001–2019 with landscape and climate variables, mixed models found higher incidence in less fragmented landscapes when riparian forests were embedded in pastoral and agricultural mosaics. Cases also tended to be higher in cooler municipalities. The study treats landscape structure as part of the host–vector–human exposure system rather than assuming forest amount has one-directional effects.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

Restoration design can change exposure pathways as well as habitat. In disease-sensitive landscapes, where forest is placed and how it connects to old-growth forest, farms and people may matter as much as total restored area. The practical lesson is to integrate disease surveillance and landscape history into restoration planning instead of treating riparian planting as ecologically context-free.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

This is an observational municipality-level study and does not show that riparian restoration itself causes Brazilian spotted fever. Tick, host and human-exposure processes vary locally, and the policy implications require site-specific epidemiological and ecological validation.

SOURCE

Journal of Applied Ecology — primary study
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Brazilian spotted-fever incidence was highest in less fragmented Atlantic Forest landscapes where riparian forest sat inside pasture–agriculture mosaics—complicating simple “restore more riparian forest” prescriptions.

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Peer-reviewed Europe

Northern Italy’s sand flies carry a recurring Wolbachia lineage that databases do not yet match

Evidence
Peer-reviewed
Geography
Northern Italy
System
Vector / peri-urban and rural habitats

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Researchers screened 1,937 sand flies in 124 pools collected from 24 sites during 2023–2025. Overall Wolbachia prevalence was estimated at 38.7%, with strong year-to-year variation. Eleven complete MLST profiles, all from Phlebotomus perniciosus, belonged to Supergroup B and shared an identical profile that had no exact match in public databases.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

Natural symbiont surveillance can reveal biological structure that standard vector datasets miss. The result is a foundation for asking whether this lineage changes sand-fly reproduction or pathogen transmission, not evidence that it already provides a control tool.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

Prevalence was estimated from pooled samples and varied by year. The study characterized infection and phylogeny; it did not test effects on vector competence, pathogen transmission, survival or the feasibility of Wolbachia-based control.

SOURCE

Parasites & Vectors — primary study
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Screening 1,937 sand flies found substantial natural Wolbachia occurrence, while 11 complete profiles from Phlebotomus perniciosus were identical and lacked an exact public-database match.

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Peer-reviewed North America

White-nose syndrome is showing up in the Black Hills as a community shift, not only a species-by-species decline

Evidence
Peer-reviewed
Geography
Black Hills, South Dakota, USA
System
Temperate bat community

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

A study compared summer bat capture rates during early white-nose-syndrome invasion in 2017–2019 with 2022–2024, after the pathogen became established in the Black Hills. WNS-susceptible Myotis species declined steeply in captures, while several less-susceptible taxa increased, indicating a substantial change in the observed community.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

Disease can reorganize the community that monitoring encounters, not merely reduce a focal species. That changes how acoustic or capture baselines should be interpreted after invasion and makes ‘total bat activity’ a potentially misleading recovery metric.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

Capture rates are not complete population censuses and can respond to sampling conditions, habitat use and other ecological pressures. The authors themselves interpret the changes as reflecting WNS alongside broader ecological forces rather than assigning every trend to disease alone.

SOURCE

Journal of Mammalogy
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Summer captures fell steeply for WNS-susceptible Myotis after the fungus became established, while captures of less-susceptible taxa increased.

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Latin America & Caribbean

A bat immune marker changed with sex, age and season instead of tracking one simple physiological state

Evidence
Peer-reviewed field physiology study
Geography
Trinidad
System
Tropical bat population / wildlife physiology

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Field sampling of wild greater spear-nosed bats found urinary neopterin positively associated with cortisol, with age-related decline in males but not females and lower male levels during the mating season. The marker therefore reflected multiple biological axes rather than one simple immune state.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

Wildlife-health biomarkers become much more useful when their demographic and seasonal baselines are known. Without that context, normal sex or life-history variation can be misread as disease or stress.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

This is one species and field population, and neopterin is a biomarker rather than a direct measure of disease outcome. Correlations with cortisol do not establish causation, and the demographic patterns should not be generalized to other bat taxa without validation.

SOURCE

Scientific Reports
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In wild greater spear-nosed bats, urinary neopterin covaried with cortisol and showed sex- and age-dependent patterns, complicating its use as a stand-alone immune indicator.

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Arctic

Community-based Inuit surveillance detected an emerging caribou disease outbreak

Evidence
Peer-reviewed community-based wildlife health surveillance
Geography
Nunavut, Canadian Arctic
System
Barren-ground caribou and Arctic food system

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

A community-based surveillance program working with Inuit harvesters documented visible lesions and filarial nematodes in harvested barren-ground caribou, including Setaria yehi and Onchocerca lineage 2. The study links local observations, veterinary investigation and molecular identification to characterize syndromes that conventional wildlife-health systems could otherwise miss across a remote landscape.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

The important result is as much about surveillance architecture as the parasites themselves. Harvesters operate across places and seasons that formal monitoring samples sparsely, so durable community partnerships can create earlier, geographically richer wildlife-health intelligence while keeping observations connected to food security and local knowledge.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

The observations do not establish a population-wide prevalence trend or prove that climate change caused the infections. Sampling is tied to subsistence harvest rather than a randomized population survey, and the study does not quantify human food-safety risk. Climate sensitivity is a plausible ecological context, not a single demonstrated causal pathway.

SOURCE

Scientific Reports
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Community-based surveillance in Nunavut documented filarial infections and lesions in barren-ground caribou, showing how Indigenous harvesting networks can extend wildlife-health detection across a rapidly changing Arctic.

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Government data North America

The U.S. mammal H5N1 detection table is still changing—and still incomplete

Evidence
Government data
Geography
United States
System
Wildlife, captive mammals and avian-influenza surveillance

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

USDA APHIS updated its mammal HPAI detections page on September 25. The table includes recent 2026 detections in mammals and explicitly warns that data may be incomplete and that additional detections will be added.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

The useful signal is surveillance breadth, not a claim of sustained mammal transmission. A dynamic cross-species detection ledger helps identify where wildlife, domestic animals and disease-monitoring systems intersect.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

Detection does not establish onward mammal-to-mammal transmission, population-level impact or a complete incidence picture. The federal table is explicitly incomplete and is updated as reports arrive.

SOURCE

USDA APHIS
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EvidenceGovernment dataGeographyUnited StatesSystemWildlife, captive mammals and avian-influenza surveillance WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS USDA APHIS updated its mammal HPAI detections page on September 25. The table includes recent 2026 detections

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Peer-reviewed Global

Emerging-disease geography has an anthropogenic fingerprint—but not one ecological driver

Evidence
Peer-reviewed
Geography
Global; 169 countries
System
Human–animal disease landscapes / One Health

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Researchers harmonized 58,319 outbreak events for 32 diseases and tested 16 social and environmental drivers while modeling reporting bias. Outbreak risk was often higher in forested, fragmented mosaic landscapes with people and livestock, and several vector-borne diseases shared strong responses to fragmentation and long-term drying. Directly transmitted zoonoses shared few consistent drivers. Reporting declined by a median 32% for each additional hour of travel time to a health facility.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

The study weakens the search for one global ecological lever against emerging disease. Landscape intervention can matter, but prevention and surveillance need to be pathogen- and place-specific—and healthcare access is itself part of the observed disease map.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

The analysis is observational and assembled from heterogeneous surveillance systems, with sparse data for several high-concern pathogens. Associations are not causal estimates for individual diseases, and under-detection remains a central limitation.

SOURCE

Nature
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A global analysis of 58,319 outbreak records finds shared landscape signals for several vector-borne diseases, while directly transmitted zoonoses show far less consistent environmental patterning.

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Peer-reviewed Europe

For Europe’s salamander fungus, diversity and density are telling different stories

Evidence
Peer-reviewed
Geography
Germany and Spain
System
Amphibian communities exposed to Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

A multi-site synthesis assembled 2,625 amphibians from Bsal-positive locations spanning 14 species. Across infected communities, Bsal prevalence was negatively associated with host-species richness and positively associated with total amphibian abundance. In fire salamanders alone, abundance instead tracked lower prevalence, a pattern the authors interpret cautiously because disease-caused mortality can itself lower host density.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

Disease ecology can invert the meaning of a familiar metric. Richness may be associated with lower pathogen prevalence, but abundance can be both a driver and a consequence of disease; management should avoid translating a cross-site 'dilution' pattern into a simple diversity prescription without resolving mechanism.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

The analysis compiles heterogeneous observational datasets and is dominated by German sites. The fire-salamander richness-by-density interaction was not statistically significant, and infected-site sampling, life stage and mortality can bias apparent prevalence relationships. This does not demonstrate a diversity intervention that controls Bsal.

SOURCE

Journal of Applied Ecology
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Across Bsal-positive European sites, infection prevalence fell as amphibian richness rose, while fire salamanders showed a reversed density relationship consistent with disease-driven population loss.

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Peer-reviewed Africa

Warmer host conditions can select for more virulent parasites over just ten passages

Evidence
Peer-reviewed
Geography
Cabo Verde isolate; laboratory host–parasite system
System
Experimental host–parasite system

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Researchers experimentally evolved the bacterial parasite Leucobacter musarum for ten passages in Caenorhabditis elegans across 20–35°C. At 25°C, host-mediated selection favored higher virulence and genomic diversification; parasites evolved at hotter temperatures maintained virulence and showed a latent increase in lethality when hosts later experienced heatwave conditions.

WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ

The weak signal is evolutionary: climate stress may alter not only disease exposure or transmission but also which parasite traits are selected. If similar dynamics occur in natural systems, temperature could change pathogen evolution on management-relevant timescales.

CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY

This is a short laboratory experimental-evolution study using one bacterium–nematode system. It does not establish that warming generally increases virulence in wildlife, livestock or human pathogens in the field.

SOURCE

Global Change Biology · Original evidence
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A short experimental-evolution study found temperature left both phenotypic and genomic signatures on a bacterial parasite—but this remains a laboratory warning signal, not a field forecast.

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