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Review
. 2020 Oct 22;16(10):e1008922.
doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1008922. eCollection 2020 Oct.

Invasive alien species and disease risk: An open challenge in public and animal health

Eleonora Chinchio  1 , Matteo Crotta  2 , Claudia Romeo  1 , Julian A Drewe  2 , Javier Guitian  2 , Nicola Ferrari  1
Affiliations
Review

Invasive alien species and disease risk: An open challenge in public and animal health

Eleonora Chinchio et al. PLoS Pathog. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Mechanisms through which IAS may increase disease risk: Real-case examples.
Dark red silhouettes represent infected hosts, and black silhouettes represent uninfected hosts. (A) IAS as sources of new pathogens: the north-American raccoon Procyon lotor introduced the nematode Baylisascaris procyonis into central European countries. Raccoons are the definitive host for B. procyonis, and they contaminate the environment by shedding parasite eggs through feces. Small mammals and birds may serve as paratenic hosts, while domestic dogs may rarely act as alternative definitive hosts. Humans, which acquire the infection as accidental hosts, can develop severe symptoms, caused by larval migration to tissues. (B) IAS as amplifiers of local pathogens: the invasive Australian possums Trichosurus vulpecula became the main reservoir host for bovine tuberculosis in New Zealand. Despite Mycobacterium bovis being introduced to New Zealand via cattle in the 1800s and possums in the 1850s, the disease was detected in possum populations only in the 1970s, in locations occupied by wild deer, when decapitation of deer was a common hunting practice. Intensive possum control actions, which cost to the country about $NZ50 million per year, have so far produced huge reductions in the number of infected cows and deer, but New Zealand is not yet free from the disease. (C) Indirect mechanisms by which IAS can disrupt local infection dynamics: in Florida, invasive pythons Python bivittatus reduced the abundance of several large and medium-sized mammals, indirectly causing the redirection of the mosquito vectors for the zoonotic Everglades virus from low-competent hosts, like deer, raccoons, and opossums, to the main reservoir host, the hispid cotton rat Sigmodon hispidus. Further research is needed to assess if the increased abundance of infectious vectors corresponds to an increase of disease risk for local human populations. IAS, invasive alien species.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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