Picornaviruses in restored woodlands: linking wildlife diversity to infection patterns in Scotland

Ecosystem restoration is a global priority aimed at enhancing both biodiversity and human well-being. However, the relationship between restoration and disease transmission risk remains poorly understood. While several theories have attempted to link biodiversity and pathogen dynamics, little is known about how this relationship unfolds during a restoration process. Even less is understood about how contextual factors (e.g., site age, connectivity, and structure) influence biodiversity and pathogen transmission. Identifying the conditions that reduce disease risk can deepen our understanding of zoonotic dynamics and inform restoration strategies that help minimize pathogen transmission. With this in mind, we aim to understand how animal composition and diversity influence pathogen dynamics across different restoration contexts in Scotland. Specifically, we want to evaluate how predator presence and diversity might affect the prevalence of Picornaviruses in rodents within restored woodlands. To accomplish this, we studied 30 woodlands from the WREN program (Woodland Creation & Ecological Networks), a long-term, large-scale natural experiment led by the University of Stirling. These sites have been extensively studied in recent years, providing access to data on vegetation structure, landscape connectivity, and camera trap records. Several studies have also demonstrated how the biodiversity of different animal groups can be influenced by the restoration context at these sites. We assessed biodiversity using three complementary methods: environmental DNA from flies, audio recordings (AudioMoth data), and historical camera trap records. These approaches were combined to obtain a comprehensive picture of biodiversity and identify predator diversity present in each woodland. From this dataset, we selected 17 sites for rodent trapping using Ugglan traps for three nights. Faecal samples collected from these traps were then analysed for Picornavirus presence using a previously standardized qPCR assay. This integrative approach provides new insights into how restoration processes shape biodiversity-pathogen interactions and disease ecology in temperate forest systems, offering a framework to better align ecological restoration goals with public health outcomes.