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Ecological Niche Modeling: An Introduction for Veterinarians and Epidemiologists

Most infectious diseases in animals are not distributed randomly. Instead, diseases in livestock and wildlife are predictable in terms of the geography, time, and species affected. Ecological niche modeling approaches have been crucial to the advancement of our understanding of diversity and disease...

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Autor principal: Escobar, Luis E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7641643/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33195507
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2020.519059
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author Escobar, Luis E.
author_facet Escobar, Luis E.
author_sort Escobar, Luis E.
collection PubMed
description Most infectious diseases in animals are not distributed randomly. Instead, diseases in livestock and wildlife are predictable in terms of the geography, time, and species affected. Ecological niche modeling approaches have been crucial to the advancement of our understanding of diversity and diseases distributions. This contribution is an introductory overview to the field of distributional ecology, with emphasis on its application for spatial epidemiology. A new, revised modeling framework is proposed for more detailed and replicable models that account for both the biology of the disease to be modeled and the uncertainty of the data available. Considering that most disease systems need at least two organisms interacting (i.e., host and pathogen), biotic interactions lie at the core of the pathogen's ecological niche. As a result, neglecting interacting organisms in pathogen dynamics (e.g., maintenance, reproduction, and transmission) may limit efforts to forecast disease distributions in veterinary epidemiology. Although limitations of ecological niche modeling are noted, it is clear that the application and value of ecological niche modeling to epidemiology will increase in the future. Potential research lines include the examination of the effects of biotic variables on model performance, assessments of protocols for model calibration in disease systems, and new tools and metrics for robust model evaluation. Epidemiologists aiming to employ ecological niche modeling theory and methods to reconstruct and forecast epidemics should familiarize themselves with ecological literature and must consider multidisciplinary collaborations including veterinarians to develop biologically sound, statistically robust analyses. This review attempts to increase the use of tools from ecology in disease mapping.
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spelling pubmed-76416432020-11-13 Ecological Niche Modeling: An Introduction for Veterinarians and Epidemiologists Escobar, Luis E. Front Vet Sci Veterinary Science Most infectious diseases in animals are not distributed randomly. Instead, diseases in livestock and wildlife are predictable in terms of the geography, time, and species affected. Ecological niche modeling approaches have been crucial to the advancement of our understanding of diversity and diseases distributions. This contribution is an introductory overview to the field of distributional ecology, with emphasis on its application for spatial epidemiology. A new, revised modeling framework is proposed for more detailed and replicable models that account for both the biology of the disease to be modeled and the uncertainty of the data available. Considering that most disease systems need at least two organisms interacting (i.e., host and pathogen), biotic interactions lie at the core of the pathogen's ecological niche. As a result, neglecting interacting organisms in pathogen dynamics (e.g., maintenance, reproduction, and transmission) may limit efforts to forecast disease distributions in veterinary epidemiology. Although limitations of ecological niche modeling are noted, it is clear that the application and value of ecological niche modeling to epidemiology will increase in the future. Potential research lines include the examination of the effects of biotic variables on model performance, assessments of protocols for model calibration in disease systems, and new tools and metrics for robust model evaluation. Epidemiologists aiming to employ ecological niche modeling theory and methods to reconstruct and forecast epidemics should familiarize themselves with ecological literature and must consider multidisciplinary collaborations including veterinarians to develop biologically sound, statistically robust analyses. This review attempts to increase the use of tools from ecology in disease mapping. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7641643/ /pubmed/33195507 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2020.519059 Text en Copyright © 2020 Escobar. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Veterinary Science
Escobar, Luis E.
Ecological Niche Modeling: An Introduction for Veterinarians and Epidemiologists
title Ecological Niche Modeling: An Introduction for Veterinarians and Epidemiologists
title_full Ecological Niche Modeling: An Introduction for Veterinarians and Epidemiologists
title_fullStr Ecological Niche Modeling: An Introduction for Veterinarians and Epidemiologists
title_full_unstemmed Ecological Niche Modeling: An Introduction for Veterinarians and Epidemiologists
title_short Ecological Niche Modeling: An Introduction for Veterinarians and Epidemiologists
title_sort ecological niche modeling: an introduction for veterinarians and epidemiologists
topic Veterinary Science
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7641643/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33195507
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2020.519059
work_keys_str_mv AT escobarluise ecologicalnichemodelinganintroductionforveterinariansandepidemiologists