Zoonotic Interface Between Wildlife and Human Settlements

Abstract

Zoonotic diseases -- pathogens transmissible between wildlife and humans -- are estimated to account for 60-75% of emerging infectious diseases, with the frequency of spillover events from wildlife to humans increasing in parallel with global land-use change, deforestation, and the expansion of human settlements into previously wildlife-dominated habitats. Understanding the ecological and spatial determinants of zoonotic spillover risk at the wildlife-human interface is essential for evidence-based pandemic preparedness and wildlife management policy. This study presents a multi-pathogen ecological analysis of zoonotic spillover risk at 247 wildlife-human interface sites in 18 countries across Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, assessing 24 zoonotic pathogens (including Leptospira, Borrelia, Salmonella, Bartonella, and SARS-related coronaviruses) in wildlife hosts and quantifying pathogen prevalence, host diversity, and contact rate as functions of landscape fragmentation, settlement density, and wildlife community composition. Pathogen prevalence in wildlife was significantly higher at sites with greater fragmentation (Shannon's H landscape diversity index negative predictor; partial R2 = 0.54; p < 0.001 for inverse relationship) and higher human settlement density (partial R2 = 0.47; p < 0.001). The dilution effect hypothesis was supported: sites with higher vertebrate host diversity showed significantly lower mean pathogen prevalence (r = -0.68; p < 0.001). A spatial spillover risk index integrating pathogen prevalence, contact rate, and human population exposure identified 84 high-priority intervention sites of which 68.4% lacked any existing One Health monitoring infrastructure.