Ecosystem health and environmental disease ecology: 25 years of Sino-French cooperation
Résumé
Based on landscape ecology and ecohealth concepts, multidisciplinary research has been carried out by our group since 1994 initially in order to understand the transmission ecology of Echinococcus multilocularis, an emerging parasite causing one of the most potentially pathogenic helminthic zoonoses in Europe and in China. Comparative field studies and modelling in the Zone atelier Arc Jurassien, France, in poor upland agricultural communities in South Gansu and Ningxia, on the Eastern Tibetan Plateau of Sichuan and Qinghai, and in northern Xinjiang, showed how anthropogenic land use and behavioural changes can modify emergence events and the long-term transmission of this parasite, and subsequently the importance of considering socio-ecosystems as a whole, in order to understand multiscale parasite and disease distribution and infection risks. Similar approach combining spatial modelling and population genetics has been successfully applied since 2012 to conservation issues such as reconnecting discrete populations of the endangered Black-and-White Snub-Nosed Monkey in North Yunnan. This led to the foundation of the LWMEH at the Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, Kunming, in 2013. This research is ongoing and extends to wild Asian elephant-human conflicts in South Yunnan.