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  • Key hosts and pathogens

    Key hosts:
    • Red fox
    • Wild boar
    • Rodents (Arvicola amphibius, Arvicola sapidus, Microtus arvalis, Myodes glareolus, Apodemus sylvaticus, Apodemus flavicollis, Mus musculus, Mus spretus, Rattus rattus, Rattus norvegivus)

    Key pathogens:
    • Aujeszky’s disease virus
    • Echinococcus multilocularis
    • Francisella tularensis

  • Get involved

    How can you contribute to APHAEA?

    Framework and funding:
    APHAEA is an EMIDA ERA-NET project. Although it is a transnational research project, project partners are funded by national organizations. No funding will be provided by APHAEA to external partners joining the project network, though collaborations are welcome.

  • Work package 4 (WP4)

    To develop a European network for wildlife health surveillance in which harmonised methods are adopted for:

    a. estimating abundance of key hosts (population size, density)
    b. diagnosing key pathogens in key hosts (sampling strategies, storage/archiving, diagnostic techniques)

  • Brief project description and aims

    Effective wildlife disease surveillance requires knowledge of the population sizes of wild animals and of changes in population size and in geographical distribution over time. Such knowledge is necessary to design appropriate sampling protocols for disease surveys, to develop disease contingency plans, to assess the risk of pathogen transmission to other species, and to guide wildlife management strategies in general. Despite the performance of both wildlife disease surveillance and estimation of wildlife population abundance in Europe, there is a considerable lack of homogeneity regarding sampling and diagnosis protocols for target surveillance programs and regarding methods for estimation of wildlife abundance, which prevents a good comparison of results between and even within countries.

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