Parasites and wildlife in a changing world: The vector-host- pathogen interaction as a learning case

Rizzoli, Annapaola; Tagliapietra, Valentina; Cagnacci, Francesca; Marini, Giovanni; Arnoldi, Daniele; Rosso, Fausta; Rosà, Roberto

Along with climate change, land use change is often ranked among the most important factors affecting the emergence of wildlife zoonosis (Loh et al., 2015; Allen et al., 2017; Guo et al., 2018) . Recent studies indicate that human-dominated ecosystems now cover more of Earth's land surface than "wild" ecosystems. Ellis and Ramankutty (2008) proposed an empirical analysis of global patterns of human population distribution, land use and other activities, and produced a global map of eighteen "anthropogenic biomes". According to this classification, more than 75% of Earth's ice-free land show evidence of alteration, from the relatively light impacts of mobile bands of hunter-gatherers to the complete replacement of pre-existing ecosystems with infrastructures, as a result of human residence and land use. Nowadays, the majority of all people live in densely populated urbanized biomes, supporting only 11% of the terrestrial net primary production, and new forms of human-ecosystem interaction arise, from low-density ex-urban developments to vast conurbations that combine high-density cities, low-density suburbs, agriculture, and even new forested areas (Ellis and Ramankutty, 2008) .