Pesticide exposure poses a growing threat to the health of wild avian populations worldwide. This report documents the first detections of agricultural chemicals in the tissues of wild Carnaby's cockatoos (Zanda latirostris) in Western Australia. The events, characterised by morbidity and mortality, occurred in a national park near Perth, following periods of elevated summer temperatures over two seasons. Toxicological analysis of liver and digestive tract contents identified multiple pesticides and an herbicide, including methomyl, a highly toxic carbamate insecticide. Hot weather conditions preceding the events potentially increased the cockatoos' use of alternative water sources for drinking, such as those in commercial vegetable gardens adjacent to the park. This represents the first published instance of insecticide poisoning in wild black cockatoos and introduces a new transmission pathway for agricultural chemical exposure in Carnaby's cockatoos. It highlights the need for targeted conservation strategies such as bird watering stations, and longer-term research on the impacts of agricultural chemical exposure in wild avian populations.
Human exposure to zoonotic diseases is rising, with serious implications for global health. Although research into zoonotic diseases has advanced in identifying the ecological drivers of pathogen spillover, comprehensive comparisons of human exposure, vulnerability, and global funding for zoonotic health are still lacking. We produced spatially explicit estimates of human exposure to zoonotic diseases, using key anthropogenic variables known to influence this process. Comparing those estimates with country-level vulnerability and global health funding reveals a structural mismatch, as the most exposed countries are often the most vulnerable and the least funded ones. This imbalance underscores critical gaps in global pandemic preparedness.
Understanding the health hazards affecting wildlife is essential for effective conservation and disease risk management. This study presents a global systematic review of health hazards affecting tapirs (Tapirus spp.), synthesising data from 221 studies published between 1924 and 2025. A total of 1970 individual-level case reports were analysed and categorised into infectious, non-infectious, and external causes. External causes, particularly vehicle collisions and hunting, accounted for 52
The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the need for rapid and effective surveillance tools to detect, monitor, and respond to emerging health threats. Digital epidemiology offers such potential by exploiting social media data to monitor both disease dynamics and public discourse. In this study, we not only measure differences in digital engagement but also explicitly analyze the sociology of online communication, comparing COVID-19-related conversations on Twitter (now X) in Mexico City and Paris over an 18-month period. We document that engagement and content on digital social networks differ profoundly between the study sites, and we interpret these divergences through a sociological and sociopolitical lens. Beyond variations in engagement, emotional tone, sentiment distribution, and hashtag usage, and after normalizing for differences in collection volume, our analysis highlights contrasting affective and political profiles: discourse in Mexico City showed higher per-tweet engagement, a larger share of fear, affiliative and positive content, and was consistent with previously documented coordinated political campaigns, whereas discourse in Paris carried a larger share of anger and of negative sentiment and appeared more fragmented and less centrally orchestrated. By highlighting these divergences, we show that digital epidemiology is inseparable from social sciences, since cultural and political contexts mediate how health information circulates and how populations engage with it. Ultimately, integrating digital technologies with interdisciplinary collaboration can enhance surveillance, provided that local sociological dynamics are explicitly considered in the design of interventions.
The spatial heterogeneity of parasite distribution is driven by factors such as land use and climate. However, the factors driving the transmission and persistence of many zoonotic parasites remain poorly understood. This study focused on the infection status of Spirometra mansoni, a zoonotic endoparasite of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes schrencki) in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. We surveyed the prevalence of S. mansoni in 251 red foxes. We investigated the association between the presence of S. mansoni infection in red foxes and land-use and climatic factors in the areas surrounding collection sites using generalized linear mixed model. We found 6.37
