Drones help show how environmental changes affect the spread of infectious diseases

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, can collect detailed information in real time at relatively low cost for ecological research. In a new Opinion piece published in the Cell Press journal Trends in Parasitology, experts demonstrate that drones can be used to understand how environmental factors influence the spread of infectious diseases. “Drones can provide highly accurate information on changes to land, such as deforestation or changing types of agriculture. This helps to understand the impact on the movement and distribution of people, animals, and insects that carry disease,” says lead author Kimberly Fornace, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in the UK. For their studies on a species of human malaria that is also carried by monkeys, as part of a larger project funded by the UK Research Council Living with Environmental Change initiative, Fornace and her colleagues are using a drone to map changes in mosquito and monkey...