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Filling the Gaps: Improving Sampling and Analysis of Disease Surveillance Data in Galápagos

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Disease Ecology

Abstract

Emerging infectious diseases in wildlife are of conservation concern worldwide, including on the Galápagos Archipelago, where isolation, small population sizes, and naïve immune systems place the birds of Galápagos at potentially higher risk of devastating impacts of disease. Wildlife disease data from surveillance efforts, whether active or passive, are invaluable because they provide a baseline understanding of what diseases are present in a system, serve as an early warning sign of an ecosystem health issue, and provide managers with information about the efficacy of disease mitigation efforts. We have learned an enormous amount about diseases affecting Galápagos avifauna in the last 20 years or so, but gaps in our understanding exist because of the challenges posed by issues with imperfect detection of hosts, parasites and pathogens, and the diseases they cause as well as uncertainty about the size of the population of the target host. Nonetheless, sampling design and analytical approaches borrowed from population and community ecology offer a suite of tools to help fill the gaps in our knowledge about diseases in wildlife in Galápagos and beyond.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Kathryn P. Huyvaert

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  1. Kathryn P. Huyvaert
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Correspondence to Kathryn P. Huyvaert .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Missouri – St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

    Patricia G. Parker

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Huyvaert, K.P. (2018). Filling the Gaps: Improving Sampling and Analysis of Disease Surveillance Data in Galápagos. In: Parker, P. (eds) Disease Ecology. Social and Ecological Interactions in the Galapagos Islands. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65909-1_11

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