Editorial: Novel Approaches to Assess Disease Dynamics at the Wildlife Livestock Interface

Our planet is transforming quickly and these changes generate a huge biodiversity loss and threaten nature's contribution to human livelihoods. The global human demographic growth generates a huge demand in food resources, which induce the transformation of natural habitats into agricultural land and the competition of wildlife and livestock for natural resources. These drivers of change are on the rise and we can anticipate an exponential growth of interactions between wildlife livestock and people, with important implications in terms of environmental conservation, biosecurity, livestock production and disease emergence (1). From the disease perspective, the risk of unexpected events resulting from wildlife populations trying to adapt to a changing world have never been so real. This is confirmed by the global spread of animal “pandemics” such as Avian Influenza or African swine fever, which generate high mortality in wildlife and/or livestock, reduce productivity and trade, increase food insecurity and in some case seriously impact on public health (2). Therefore, the need for understanding the drivers and dynamics of this interface between domestic, wild animals is bigger than ever. This is a great challenge because this interface represents critical points for cross-species disease transmission and emergence of pathogens that are complex, difficult to monitor and require innovative, interdisciplinary, approaches and coordinated actions to improve disease prevention and management. 
 
This Research Topic features a series of examples illustrating the complexity of wildlife-livestock interface ecosystems and the diversity of tools and methodologies applied in the study of disease dynamics in a variety of geographical areas, including Asian, African, and European settings.


INTRODUCTION
Our planet is transforming quickly and these changes generate a huge biodiversity loss and threaten nature's contribution to human livelihoods. The global human demographic growth generates a huge demand in food resources, which induce the transformation of natural habitats into agricultural land and the competition of wildlife and livestock for natural resources. These drivers of change are on the rise and we can anticipate an exponential growth of interactions between wildlife livestock and people, with important implications in terms of environmental conservation, biosecurity, livestock production and disease emergence (1). From the disease perspective, the risk of unexpected events resulting from wildlife populations trying to adapt to a changing world have never been so real. This is confirmed by the global spread of animal "pandemics" such as Avian Influenza or African swine fever, which generate high mortality in wildlife and/or livestock, reduce productivity and trade, increase food insecurity and in some case seriously impact on public health (2). Therefore, the need for understanding the drivers and dynamics of this interface between domestic, wild animals is bigger than ever. This is a great challenge because this interface represents critical points for cross-species disease transmission and emergence of pathogens that are complex, difficult to monitor and require innovative, interdisciplinary, approaches and coordinated actions to improve disease prevention and management.
This Research Topic features a series of examples illustrating the complexity of wildlife-livestock interface ecosystems and the diversity of tools and methodologies applied in the study of disease dynamics in a variety of geographical areas, including Asian, African, and European settings.

DIVERSITY OF WILD-DOMESTIC INTERFACES
Our Research Topic illustrates this diversity by the presentation of three papers focusing specifically on interactions between wild and domestic suiform species using different monitoring methods in Africa (

A PANEL OF TOOLS FOR UNDERSTANDING NEW INTERFACE HOTSPOTS
The study of interactions among sympatric host species has aroused interest in epidemiology as an approach implemented to detect effective contacts involving pathogen transmission within communities of hosts. The study of epidemiological interactions has been a relevant topic in applied sciences for many years. However, interactions with a potential risk of pathogen transmission are multiple and complex, and many of the approaches employed to monitor these processes have been developed and adapted from other fields, mainly in the last two decades. Understanding this complexity requires the implementation of different tools and methods to assess aspects linked with the environment, its pathogens and the species that share the studied interface, including humans. Some of the papers presented in this collection, characterize the interface by describing or measuring ecological interactions between sympatric species. The use of camera traps, to monitor interactions between sympatric species is not new. However

FINAL REMARKS
The concept of interface in all its dimensions is complex and susceptible to change together with the evolution of natural landscapes, but specially, with increasing human intervention (or impact). One of the characteristics of the wildlife-livestock interface is the integration of ecological, agricultural and human systems, which requires the need to consider multiple and diverse disciplines and solutions. This Research Topic illustrates the challenge to assess and control health problems at the wildlife-livestock-human interface and the need to adopt innovative approaches that merge academic disciplines with social aspects and engage relevant partners.
Many of the articles around the wildlife-livestock interface topic addressed the spread of diseases affecting livestock (avian influenza, pig diseases, or tick borne diseases). As identified in previous review on the topic (1), there is a bias toward anthropocentric funded driven priorities already identified in the literature Future article collections are needed to address this gap and explore the other side of the coin, represented by disease transmission in wildlife populations and its potential impact in biodiversity.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
FJ has written the manuscript. BM-L and JV have read the manuscript, made corrections and approved it for publication.