Wildlife Clinical Pathology: A One Health Key to Ecosystem Assessment

Dear Colleagues,

Wildlife are integral components of ecosystems worldwide, and they depend upon healthy ecological systems not only to individually survive but to sustain and renew their populations. However, human encroachment, land use change and climate change continue to reduce wildlife populations and threaten many species worldwide with extinction. Our relationship with wildlife extends to prehistory as sources of domesticated animals, food, fiber and seasonal change. From the earliest recorded form of human communications in caves, wildlife have and continue to serve as cultural symbols of many more subtle universal concepts such as curiosity, creativity, balance, self-sacrifice, and strength. This assignment of deeper meaning suggests that our connection to wildlife extends well beyond that of functional and suggests that at the deepest levels of human connection there is need for wildlife conservation. As a part of wildlife conservation, in situ and ex situ assessment of the health of individuals and populations without the need for animal sacrifice or morbidity has become imperative as many populations continue to dwindle. Especially as many analyzers have become more portable, rapid and cost efficient, clinical pathology increasingly provides a more accessible pathway for wildlife health assessment.

We invite original research incorporating clinical pathology to assess wildlife species that generates new and robust clinical pathology methods for assessing free-living wildlife as part of their ecosystems and that allows and promotes this continuing avenue of investigation. While species in need of conservation are most acceptable, species from stable populations or introduced or nuisance species used as indicators ecosystem health based on clinicopathologic assessment will also be considered. We are most interested in science to assess those nonmammalian species often classed as “lower vertebrates”, and invertebrates, but will also review for the inclusion of overlooked nonrodent small mammalian species that are integral to ecosystem health or that indicate ecosystem health (hedgehogs, tenrec, etc.). Reference data useful for conservation and welfare of a species, in captivity or in the free-living state, are of particular interest. However, investigations into the use of new and old analytes as useful diagnostic analytes for wildlife species are also welcome.

Dr. J. Jill Heatley
Dr. Jessica A. Hokamp
Dr. Karen E. Russell
Guest Editors

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• wildlife
• clinical pathology
• ecohealth
• biochemistry
• hematology
• ecology