The recent re-emergence and spread of the Zika virus, coupled with the link to a surge in microcephaly cases, has gripped the attention of the global health community, the general public, and professional golfers alike.  Of course Zika isn’t new – it was first discovered in 1947 – however the scale of the outbreak in 2015 was unprecedented.  Given that there are currently no effective vaccines or medicines against Zika, suggested management efforts have mainly focussed on vector control (e.g. through traditional insecticides, the use of microbes to control pathogens, or genetic manipulation or selective breeding of mosquitoes to reduce vector population sizes or otherwise prevent them from transmitting the virus).  To deploy these vector-targeted methods effectively it is clearly essential to understand vector ecology.  Indeed, recent attempts to explain the patterns of infection and predict the likely number of cases in the future highlight the importance of ecological processes such as: heterogeneities in transmission, the magnitude of herd immunity, seasonality in dynamics, seasonal forcing or other environmental drivers, and the potential for the virus to circulate within reservoir populations etc (see here and here).  Of course, these processes aren’t unique to Zika – they are fundamental aspects of the ecology of any vector-borne infection.  As such these ecological processes have been well studied in many vector-borne disease systems, whether they relate to human diseases or not.This breadth of ecological research across vector disease systems is reflected in a recent Virtual Issue compiled by Wiley including papers from Journal of Animal Ecology and other BES journals. Continue reading “The role of ecology in managing vector-borne diseases: Zika and beyond”