wildlife diseases

can influence shifts in host geographical ranges and den-sities [9], interspecific interactions [5] and contamination of the environment with pathogens [10]. For example, across 176 foraging sites for wading birds in coastal Flor-ida, a highly pathogenic nematode occurred only at sites disturbed by stream engineering and nutrient fluxes [10]. Many of the above processes have been studied in the context of agricultural land use or forest edge habitats, and are also relevant to pathogen spread in urbanized landscapes. to the ecology of wildlife diseases. The answer involves at least three crucial processes (Table 1). First, for diseases such as toxoplasmosis or rabies, which affect urban-adapted wildlife species, infection dynamics can change across a gradient of habitats, in some cases leading to increased prevalence in urban or suburban environments. Second, rarer wildlife species, such asmany wood warblers or flying squirrels and other small rodents, which persist within city parks or surrounding natural areas, can be affected negatively by pathogens maintained in urban-adapted hosts (Box 2). The increased dominance of a few key host species, and conditions that favor interspecific contact rates, could cause declines of rarer wildlife through competition mediated by multi-host parasites [12,16]