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

Land use change, other than being considered an important driver of climate change, is also directly associated to biodiversity loss along with other socio-economic determinants of wildlife exploitation. As a consequence, we are now facing a sixth mass extinction event that is strongly correlated to anthropogenic factors (Ceballos et al., 2015) . The loss of biodiversity is a critical problem for humans in the first place, threatening valuable ecosystem services and wellbeing. A growing body of evidence indicates that current anthropogenic extinction rates are the highest and the rapidest ever observed on earth. Humans have in fact triggered declines and extinctions of animals in the past 500 years comparable to the 5 previous mass extinctions together. As an example, 322 vertebrate species disappeared since 1500, 28% of vertebrate declined in the last 40 years, 35% of lepidoptera declined in the last 40 years, 33% of all insects with IUCN-documented population trends are declining although with strong variation among orders (Dirzo et al., 2014) .