Advances in Parasitology

The discipline of parasitology is undergoing a profound paradigm shift as anthropogenic pressures dissolve the boundaries separating wildlife, domestic animals, and human populations. This Volume brings together three foundational chapters on vector-borne parasite transmission, wildlife reservoirs, and the ecological frameworks necessary to combat global zoonoses. In the opening Chapter, Sarah N. Farrell and colleagues propose that treating the mosquito vector rather than the human host with antimalarial compounds may represent a suitable and sustainable strategy for malaria control. By attacking the Plasmodium parasite at its bottleneck oocyst stage within the vector, this approach exploits a lower parasite population size to drastically minimize the evolutionary selection pressure for drug resistance. Transitioning from micro-level vector dynamics to macro-level landscape epidemiology, Andrea Springer and colleagues document how conservation successes and urban adaptation have shifted the distribution of zoonotic pathogens. Focusing on the red fox as primary sentinel, the authors illustrate how wild reservoirs dynamically interact with domestic animals and humans, highlighting the importance of the health triangle connecting wild carnivores to urban public health. Finally, Alicia Rojas and Alberto Solano-Barquero dissect the micro- and macroevolutionary events, such as host-switching and hybridization, that allow multi-host parasites to overcome human physiological defenses, and propose instead a balanced "One Health pentad" that gives equal weight to wildlife reservoirs, intermediate bridge hosts, vectors, and complex environmental stages.