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Introduction
My research seeks to identify micro and macro ecological and evolutionary relationships that influence the occurrence of infections affecting wildlife, domestic animals, and human health. My research is focused mainly on two questions 1) how infections relate with land-use changes and biodiversity loss? and 2) how infections are boosted or reduced by the assemblage of host and non-host species resulting from the development of modern societies?.
Additional affiliations
June 2006 - present
September 1999 - June 2005
Publications
Publications (151)
Diseases should be an important factor to consider in long-term plans for managing and conserving protected areas; this increases the requirement for epidemiological surveillance in wildlife to search for new natural reservoirs that could be a source for human and animal infection, especially in those species that inhabit reserves and parks that ar...
Introducción Nos encontramos en un momento en el que la reflexión sobre nuestra forma de relacionarnos con el planeta nos debe llevar a replantear el modelo civilizatorio moderno y la concepción del mundo. Hoy, con la emergencia de enfermeda-des como la producida por el virus sars-cov-2, el aumento en la temperatura global y la crisis climática, se...
Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF), caused by the bacterium Rickettsia rickettsii, is a re-emerging tick-borne zoonosis in North America, with hundreds of human fatalities in multiple outbreaks in northern Mexico and the southwestern US in the past few decades. Free-roaming dogs are key because they are reservoirs for the pathogen and the main hos...
Background: It is well established that infection patterns in nature can be driven by host, vector, and symbiont communities. One of the first stages in understanding how these complex systems have influenced the incidence of vector-borne diseases is to recognize what are the major vertebrate (i.e., hosts) and invertebrate (i.e., vectors) host spec...
The Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing provide an international legal framework that aims to prevent misappropriation of the genetic resources of a country and ensure the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use. The legislation was negotiated at the behest of lower-income,...
Urbanization is a global trend associated with key socio-economic issues, one of them being to control the transmission of infectious diseases to a urban fraction of the world's population that shall reach 68% in 2050. While urban growth has been shown to favor mosquito species responsible for the transmission of the West Nile Virus (WNV), a major...
The biomagnification and biodilution of inorganic pollutants, have a close correlation on the structure and function of trophic change behavior; sea turtles represent an excellent bioindicator model to identify their impact in marine ecosystems. To understand pollution effects on marine ecosystems, we quantified the bioconcentration of 50 inorganic...
La pandemia de COVID-19 es una de las manifestaciones más notorias de los procesos globales que están afectando a la humanidad. Los efectos de las actividades antropogénicas y los cambios climáticos, demográficos y tecnológicos han modificado los patrones de riesgo de las enfermedades infecciosas en las últimas décadas. Estas enfermedades han apare...
Backyard animal husbandry is common in rural communities in developing countries and, given the conditions in which it occurs, it can increase the risk of disease transmission, such as arboviruses. To determine the presence of the Zika virus (ZIKV) and abundance of its arthropod vectors we evaluated the socioeconomic implications involved in its tr...
Host-virus associations have co-evolved under ecological and evolutionary selection pressures that shape cross-species transmission and spillover to humans. Observed virus-host associations provide relevant context for newly discovered wildlife viruses to assess knowledge gaps in host-range and estimate pathways for potential human infection. Using...
Dogs have been recognized as a conservation concern for wildlife. Increasing dog populations have led to a rise in health and ecological problems for humans and wildlife. Dog demography and husbandry practices of dog ownership are key factors for planning population and disease management programs. We conducted a cross-sectional dog demography stud...
More than ever, there is a need to understand how pathogens, vectors and hosts occur temporally and spatially to predict the occurrence of zoonotic outbreaks. Related to this, mites of the Mesostigmata and Trombidiformes orders have the potential to transmit several diseases, yet their information of occurrence, distribution and zoonotic accompanyi...
Enterobacteriaceae are considered one the most important zoonotic pathogens. In this study, we analyzed the characteristics of E. coli and Salmonella spp. strains present in carnivores from Janos Biosphere Reserve, Mexico. These microorganisms had been isolated from a wide range of domestic and free-range animals, including wild carnivores. Fifty-f...
The broad distribution of macroparasites and their thriving populations are matters of health and economic concern. Macroparasites cause damage both directly through their feeding habits, which impact host fitness, and indirectly through the transmission of various infectious diseases of relevance to human and domestic animal health and wildlife co...
Quienes vivimos en la Ciudad de México sabemos lo caótico que es el tráfico. A todas horas, filas de automóviles invaden las principales avenidas de la capital del país, haciendo que viajes que deberían hacerse en cuestión de minutos lleguen a tomar de dos o hasta tres horas en las llamadas horas pico. Dentro de alguno de los automóviles debe haber...
In Mexico, studies on chiropters have reported the presence of eight families and a total of 138 species, of which seven families and 55 species are reported for the state of Sinaloa. However, the Sierra de Navachiste, México is a natural protected area of state jurisdiction registered as an area subject to Ecological Conservation. studies on bat p...
Land-use change has a direct impact on species survival and reproduction, altering their spatio-temporal distributions. It acts as a selective force that favors the abundance and diversity of reservoir hosts and affects host–pathogen dynamics and prevalence. This has led to land-use change being a significant driver of infectious diseases emergence...
Metacommunity ecology studies how species compositional patterns and their distributions vary across local and regional scales and provides insights on processes driving the distribution of communities. Avian haemo-sporidians comprise a diverse and widely distributed parasite taxon; some studies have analyzed their alpha and beta diversity patterns...
Host-virus associations have co-evolved under ecological and evolutionary selection pressures that shape cross-species transmission and spillover to humans. Observed virus-host associations provide relevant context for newly discovered wildlife viruses to assess knowledge gaps in host range and estimate pathways for potential human infection. Using...
Las poblaciones del tapir centroamericano (Tapirus bairdii), al igual que muchas especies en peligro de extinción, son vulnerables a diversos factores como enfermedades, destrucción y fragmentación del hábitat, disminución de la diversidad genética, alteraciones climatológicas, incremento en la tasa de contacto con especies exóticas e invasivas y l...
(Introducción):
Los humedales someros son relevantes para las aves acuáticas, actualmente son afectados por el cambio climático y las actividades humanas, esto se ha relacionado con brotes de botulismo aviar.
(Objetivo):
Identificar cambios bióticos y fisicoquímicos en los humedales que podrían propiciar brotes de botulismo. Identificar fuentes de...
Simple Summary: The presence of flavivirus-specific antibodies in neotropical non-human primates (NPs) (i.e., dengue virus) is well known. However, it is unclear if dengue virus or other flaviviruses could be maintained in sylvatic cycles. We detected the presence of antibodies against dengue virus (DENV-1, DENV-2), Saint Louis encephalitis virus (...
Currently, Salmonella spp. is the bacterium causing that causes the highest number of food-borne diseases (FADs) in the world. It is primarily mainly associated with contaminated water used to that irrigates crops from intensive livestock farming. However, literature emphasizes that the reservoirs for Salmonella spp. remain in wildlife and there ar...
The COVID‐19 pandemic has impacted the entire world, causing a great number of mortality of humans and affecting the economy, while conservation efforts are finally recognized to prevent further pandemics. The wildlife rehabilitation centers (WRCs) play a relevant role in animal welfare; nevertheless, they also represent an imminent risk of pathoge...
Humankind is currently facing the effects of an unparalleled pandemic that has impacted healthcare, social, and economic systems worldwide. Numerous studies have been published since the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began in Wuhan, China. Most have focused on virology, epidemiology, pathogenesis, and therapeutic medicine, having been centered by reactive st...
Background:
Human population expansion has increased the contact between domestic animals and wildlife, thereby increasing the transmission of infectious diseases including canine distemper virus (CDV). Here, we investigated the risk factors associated with CDV exposure in domestic and wild carnivores from the Janos Biosphere Reserve (JBR), Mexico...
In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response,...
Given the significant impact of mosquito-borne flaviviruses (MBFVs) on both human and animal health, predicting their dynamics and understanding their transmission cycle is of the utmost importance. Usually, predictions about the distribution of priority pathogens, such as Dengue, Yellow fever, West Nile Virus and St. Louis encephalitis, relate abi...
Understanding the assembly processes of symbiont communities, including viromes and microbiomes, is important for improving predictions on symbionts’ biogeography and disease ecology. Here, we use phylogenetic, functional, and geographic filters to predict the similarity between symbiont communities, using as a test case the assembly process in vir...
Over one hundred cases of human rickettsiosis, many fatal, are reported annually across the US-Mexico transboundary region, representing a likely undercount. Although cases are often attributed to Rickettsia rickettsii, the agent of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, multiple other Rickettsia pathogens are present in North America. We conducted multiple...
P igs are susceptible to experimental Zika virus infection (1-4), but evidence of natural infection is lacking. Microcephaly has occurred in fetal piglets after in utero inoculation, and neurologic disease has occurred in neonates after intracranial inoculation, suggesting that pigs are a suitable animal model for the study of Zika virus. Three-mon...
Global change and ecosystem transformation at regional and local scales during recent decades have facilitated the exponential increase of outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases. Mosquito-borne pathogens are responsible for millions of infections, mainly in tropical regions where marginalized human populations are located, and where in recent years p...
We assessed the effect of temperature on subclinical Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis ( Bd ) infection in three species of plethodontids. Collected individuals were tested for Bd in the field during the dry and rainy season and randomly assigned to 15° and 18°C treatments for 30 days. We collected 129 salamanders, of these nine individuals tested pos...
The sub-humid native rainforest in Yucatan is one of the most endangered in Mexico. Cattle production is one of the main causes of land use change and silvopastoral systems are a feasible alternative. This work compares the sustainable performance of silvopastoral (native and intensive) and monoculture cattle farms in the state of Yucatan using the...
La zoonosis por COVID-19 trae consigo numerosas lecciones para la humanidad. Una de ellas relacionada con la transformación de nuestro vínculo con la naturaleza, en particular con la vida silvestre, dado el probable origen de COVID-19 relacionado con el comercio ilegal de vida silvestre. De forma similar a las enfermedades transmitidas por vectores...
The COVID-19 zoonosis is bringing about a number of lessons to humanity. One is that of transforming our links with nature and, particularly, wildlife given the likely COVID-19 origin from illegal wildlife trading. Similar to vector borne diseases (VBD, diseases transmitted by vectors), the COVID-19 pandemic follows related patterns (e.g. no effect...
Human health and wellbeing and the health of the biosphere are inextricably linked. The state of Earth’s life-support systems, including freshwater, oceans, land, biodiversity, atmosphere, and climate, affect human health. At the same time, human activities are adversely affecting natural systems. This review paper is the outcome of an interdiscipl...
The IPBES Bureau and Multidisciplinary Expert Panel,
in the context of the extraordinary situation caused by
the COVID-19 pandemic, and considering the role that
IPBES can play in strengthening the knowledge base
on biodiversity, decided that IPBES would organize a
“Platform workshop” on biodiversity and pandemics, in
accordance with the procedures...
The apicomplexan parasite Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) has been found in more than 350 species of homoeothermic vertebrates in diverse climates and geographic areas. In most animals, T. gondii produces mild or asymptomatic infection. However, acute and hyperacute toxoplasmosis is associated with high mortality rates observed
in Neotropical primate...
The apicomplexan parasite Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) has been found in more than 350 species of homoeothermic vertebrates in diverse climates and geographic areas. In most animals, T. gondii produces mild or asymptomatic infection. However, acute and hyperacute toxoplasmosis is associated with high mortality rates observed in Neotropical primate...
Rabies transmitted by common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) has been known since the early 1900s but continues to expand geographically and in the range of species and environments affected. In this review, we present current knowledge of the epidemiology and management of rabies in D. rotundus and argue that it can be reasonably considered an em...
Concerns about the prospect of a global pandemic have been triggered many times during the last two decades. These have been realised through the current COVID‐19 pandemic, due to a new coronavirus SARS‐CoV2, which has impacted almost every country on Earth. Here, we show how considering the pandemic through the lenses of the evolutionary ecology o...
The influence of the anthropogenic transformation of the landscape by livestock activities on the composition and specificity of ectoparasite communities associated with bats was evaluated in livestock productions of the state of Veracruz. Sites with different levels of landscape transformation were compared, including productions under grazing sys...
RESUMEN. Se evaluó la influencia de la transformación antropogénica del paisaje por actividades pecuarias sobre la composición y especificidad de las comunidades de ectoparásitos asociadas a murciélagos, en ranchos ganaderos del estado de Veracruz. Se compararon sitios con diferente nivel de transformación del paisaje que incluyeron producciones ba...
Parvoviruses in the genera Bocaparvovirus (HBoV), Erythroparvovirus (B19) and Tetraparvovirus (PARV4) are the only autonomous parvoviruses known to be associated with human and nonhuman primates based on studies and clinical cases in humans worldwide and nonhuman primates in Asia and Africa. Here, the presence of these agents with pathogenic potent...
La vida es un sistema químico autónomo con información genética que le permite adaptarse y evolucionar. La sopa primordial es la teoría del origen de la vida más conocida, pero existen otras teorías como el mundo ARN y las ventilas hidrotermales. La primera evidencia de vida tiene 2500 millones de años. Por otra parte, los científicos buscan vida e...
Land-use change can raise the risk of human exposure to zoonotic diseases by increasing abundance of reservoir hosts. In this study, we conducted a meta-analysis on the associations between land-use change and the abundance of rodent species in relation to their reservoir status for rodent-borne diseases. Using the PREDICT database, we analyzed 58...
Amphibian populations are globally declining at an alarming rate, and infectious diseases are among the main causes of their decline. Two micro-parasites, the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (BD) and the virus Ranavirus (RV) have caused mass mortality of amphibians and population declines. Other less understood epizootics are caused by macro-...
Mosquito-borne flaviviruses (MBFVs) are of public and animal health concern because they cause millions of human deaths annually and impact domestic animals and wildlife globally. MBFVs are phylogenetically divided into two clades, one is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes (Ae-MBFVs) associated with mammals and the other by Culex mosquitoes (Cx-MBFVs)...
Eighty-three wild and domestic carnivores of nine species from Janos Biosphere Reserve (JBR), Mexico, were tested by serologic and molecular assays to determine exposure and infection rates of carnivore protoparvovirus 1. Overall, 50.8% (33/65) of the wild carnivores and 100% (18/18) of the domestic dogs tested were seropositive for Canine protopar...
Hantaviruses are transmitted by rodents producing the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) in the Americas. Today, no human cases of HPS have been reported in Mexico in spite of similar environmental conditions with Central America and the USA where several cases have occurred. To understand the current situation of hantaviruses in Mexico and the pu...
Sixty-five wild carnivores and twenty free-roaming dogs from the Janos Biosphere Reserve (JBR), northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, were inspected for ticks which were tested by molecular assays to identify Borrelia and Rickettsia infections. Overall, 45 ticks belonging to five taxa, including Dermacentor parumapertus, Ixodes hearlei, Ixodes kingi, Rhi...
Bats and rodents are recognized to host a great diversity of viruses and several important viral zoonoses, but how this viral diversity is structured and how viruses are connected, shared and distributed among host networks is not well understood. To address this gap in knowledge, we compared the associative capacity of the host–virus networks in r...
Parvoviruses in the genera Bocaparvovirus (HBoV), Erythroparvovirus (B19) and Tetraparvovirus (PARV4) are the only autonomous parvoviruses known to be associated with human and non-human primates based on studies and clinical cases in humans worldwide and non-human primates in Asia and Africa. Here, the presence of these pathogenic agents was asses...
The distribution of orthopoxviruses (OPXVs) across the North American continent is suggested to be widespread in a wide range of mammalian hosts on the basis of serosurveillance studies. To address the question of whether carnivores in northwestern Mexico are exposed to naturally circulating OPXVs, wild carnivores were collected by live trapping wi...
Neotropical wild rodents from Costa Rica were analyzed for the presence of herpesviruses (order Herpesvirales, family Herpesviridae). Using a broadly generic PCR, herpesvirus sequences were detected in 5% (8/160) of liver and heart samples: seven putative gammaherpesviruses in samples from Talamancan oryzomys (Nephelomys devius), sprightly colilarg...
Zoonotic diseases transmitted by wildlife affect biological conservation, public and animal health, and the economy. Current research efforts are aimed at finding wildlife pathogens at a given location. However, a meta-analytical approach may reveal emerging macroecological patterns in the host-pathogen relationship at different temporal and spatia...
Background
RNA viruses commonly infect bats and rodents, including mosquito-borne flaviviruses (MBFV) that affect human and animal health. Serological evidence suggests past interactions between these two mammalian orders with dengue viruses (DENV), West Nile virus (WNV), and yellow fever virus (YFV). Although in Mexico there are reports of these v...
Abstract. The main ectoparasites of small rodents at a Mayan community of Yucatán State, southeastern México were determined. Rodents were trapped in peridomestic areas of 20 houses from March to September 2016. Ectoparasites were removed from the rodents and morphologically identified. Total rodents infested were 22.9% (53/231). Prevalence of ecto...
One of the main goals of community ecology is to measure the relative importance of environmental filters to understand patterns of species distribution at different temporal and spatial scales. Likewise, the identification of factors that shape symbiont metacommunity structures is important in disease ecology because resulting structures drive dis...
We fully sequenced the genome of Houston virus, a recently discovered mosquito-associated virus belonging to the newly established family Mesoniviridae . The isolate was recovered from Culex quinquefasciatus in southern Mexico, which shows that the geographic range of Houston virus is not restricted to the United States in North America.
We fully sequenced the genome of Houston virus, a recently discovered mosquito-associated virus belonging to the newly established family Mesoniviridae. The isolate was recovered from Culex quinquefasciatus in southern Mexico, which shows that the geographic range of Houston virus is not restricted to the United States in North America.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of environmental (dry versus wet season) and individual (sex, body mass and reproductive status) factors in the levels of faecal cortisol metabolites (FGCs) in Gracilinanus agilis faecal samples as an index of stress levels in this species; as well as its association with abundance of Eimeria spp, as a...
The aim of this research was to detect rabies virus in peripheral tissues in captive vampires. Vampire bats were inoculated with 106 MICLD50 of homologous rabies virus. Bats displayed clinical signs of rabies beginning on d 8 until the 19th d post-inoculation (pi). Rabies virus antigens were found in the brain of all rabid bats. Viral RNA was detec...
Recently, the United-Nations adopted 17 sustainable development goals for the 2030 Agenda. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 "Ensuring a healthy life and promoting well-being for all ages" is one of the most trans-versal goals, which is interconnected with the other SDGs. The health and well-being are the aim of this goal and also, they are...
During a study to identify zoonotic pathogens in northwestern Mexico, we detected the presence of a rickettsial agent in Dermacentor parumapertus ticks from black-tailed jackrabbits (Lepus californicus). Comparison of 4 gene sequences (gltA, htrA, ompA, and ompB) of this agent showed 99%-100% identity with sequences of Rickettsia parkeri.
