LAUSR

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are spread by direct and/or indirect contacts between a pathogen or parasite and their hosts. Arthropod vectors have evolved as excellent bloodsuckers, providing an elegant transportation mode for a wide number of infectious agents. The nature of pathogen and parasite transfer and the models used to predict how a disease might spread are magnified in complexity when an arthropod vector is part of the disease cycle. One Health is a worldwide strategy for expanding interdisciplinary collaborations and communications in all aspects of health care for humans, animals and the environment. It would benefit from a structured analysis to address vectoring of arthropod-borne diseases as a dynamic transactional process. This review focused on how arthropod vector data can be used to better model and predict zoonotic disease outbreaks. With enhanced knowledge to describe arthropod vector disease transfer, researchers will have a better understanding about how to model disease outbreaks. As public health research evolves to include more social-ecological systems, the roles of society, ecology, epidemiology, pathogen/parasite evolution and animal behavior can be better captured in the research design. Overall, because of more collaborative data collection processes on arthropod vectors, disease modeling can better predict conditions where EIDs will occur.