Fifty Years of Wildlife Diseases in Europe: A Citation Database Meta-Analysis

Although wildlife has progressively been recognized as a booster for the spillover of pathogens to humans and other wild and domestic animals, the interest of scientists in this topic has not been constant over time and uniform in its targets. Epidemiological outbreaks and technological development...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Veterinary sciences 2022-11, Vol.9 (11), p.629
Main Authors: Vada, Rachele, Zanet, Stefania, Ferroglio, Ezio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal diseases
Biodiversity
Birds
Citation indexes
Domestic animals
Economic impact
Ecosystem management
Epidemiology
Hirsch index
Infectious diseases
Influenza
Medical Subject Headings-MeSH
Meta-analysis
Parasitic diseases
Pathogens
Public health
publication trends
Queries
Rabies
scientific databases
trend analysis
Trends
Tropical diseases
Vectors (Biology)
Viruses
West Nile virus
wild animals
Wildlife
Wildlife conservation
Zoonoses
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
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Summary:Although wildlife has progressively been recognized as a booster for the spillover of pathogens to humans and other wild and domestic animals, the interest of scientists in this topic has not been constant over time and uniform in its targets. Epidemiological outbreaks and technological development have contributed to this. Through the analysis of the number of publications from a citation database, we aimed to obtain an indicator of the scientific community’s interest towards wildlife diseases over the years. Using Web of Science, bibliographic searches were performed by adding to the basic search string “Wildlife AND Disease” terms detailing topics such as aspect investigated, pathogen type, aetiologic group and species group. For each host species group, the 100 most frequent Medical Subject Headings (MeSHs) related to specific diseases in each decade were extracted. The scientific production regarding wildlife diseases has increased 3.7 times the relative proportion of publications on diseases during the last 50 years, focusing mainly on zoonotic or epizootic pathogens, and with a sharp growth in contemporary hot topics. Wildlife disease scenarios are complex and challenging to approach. Knowing the trends in the scientific interest in the past decades may pose a guide to direct future steps and actions in several fields, from public health to ecosystem management.
ISSN:2306-7381
2306-7381
DOI:10.3390/vetsci9110629