Our capacity to predict areas at risk of emergence of infectious animal diseases (ID) and to minimize pathogen spreading is directly linked to our understanding of population dynamics of pathogens within and outside hosts, including interactions within and between hosts and within a community of hosts. These relationships are complexified by global changes (mobility intensification, land-use, and climate changes), which highly influence contacts among hosts and vectors’ distribution. Therefore, there is a crucial need to produce knowledge regarding population dynamics of pathogens. This relies on three main issues, which are: (i) identify mechanisms and drivers promoting an increase in virulence, transmissibility and host-shift, (ii) well understand the impact of host factors as a key parameter of pathogen evolution and dynamics, in particular those provided by vaccination or pre-existing immunity or by host genetics, and (iii) identify transmission routes, including the role of vectors and of the environment in dissemination and transmission to highlight areas at risk of emergence and spread. Addressing these issues is essential for ID management, in providing stakeholders and policy makers with strategies and methods for surveillance, prevention and control of IDs (breaking the route of transmission, detection, inactivation of pathogens…) within the context of global changes. Within the frame of the Research Innovation Action HORIZON-CL6-2022-FARM2FORK-02-03 call, WiLiMan-ID intends to tackle these issues using IDs that each represent both a threat and a model for studying the ecology of infectious animal diseases, thanks to the diversity of transmission pathways and hosts and putative vectors involved. The communities of hosts considered vary depending on the disease and include humans, domestic animals (poultry, horses and pigs) and wildlife (wild birds, wild boars and cervids). The selected IDs are avian influenza, caused by avian influenza virus; African horse sickness caused by African horse sickness virus, fatal neuronal disease caused by West Nile virus (that will be studied together with the Usutu virus as a co-infecting agent); African swine fever caused by African swine fever virus; and chronic wasting disease caused by an atypical pathogen belonging to the prion-like family. The two main innovative aspects of WiLiMan-ID are (i) the integration of fine-grained features of pathogens and host behaviour with large scale observations across different compartments of the ecosystem to gain an integrated vision of ID (re-)emergence, persistence and spread, and (ii) the study of contrasted patho-ecosystems in order to gain a more complete view of their intertwinement. This will help us gain relevant knowledge and develop methods to anticipate and face future, mostly unknown, infectious health threats with better proficiency. Overall, WiLiMan-ID aims at (i) improving the capacity for risk-based surveillance thanks to a better understanding of sources and pathways of emergence and spread of animal IDs, (ii) enhancing the capacity to prevent and control IDs in animals, and their potential impact in human populations, and (iii) improving our understanding of the impact of climate change on pathogen ecology and animal IDs to predict and possibly anticipate with appropriate countermeasures. To tackle this challenge and reach the expected outcomes of the call, the consortium will bring together a strong group of academic and non-academic (private companies, stakeholders…) partners with the wide range of expertise needed to intregrate the multiple levels of complexity (pathogen, host, communities of hosts, territory) of WiLiMan-ID and to interlink complementary disciplines. WiLiMan-ID will be embeded within Prezode and will thus benefit from the network developed by this initiative.

The focus of the ANR proposal is to launch a network joining European and non-European teams working on local development in the highlands, in order to submit a proposal to RISE (Research and Innovation Staff Exchange) Marie Curie Program/H2020 early 2017. The objectives of the RISE proposal will be (i) share and debate the diverse initiatives and innovations of local development in the highlands, (ii) develop specific capacity building focused on different types of stakeholders and local people, (iii) participate in policymaking through relevant suggestions, monitoring and assessment of actions and (iv) strengthen a recognized European competence on the local development in the highlands. The partnership for the ANR proposal, and consequently for the RISE proposal, is based four countries of European Union (Austria, France, Portugal and United Kingdom), two other European countries (Norway and Switzerland) and non-European countries in Mediterranean (Morocco and Lebanon), the Americas (Argentina, Canada, Equator, Peru, the United States) and Eastern Asia (China and Vietnam). Research question is adaptation process and resilience of high mountain societies to global change, especially initiatives and innovations focused on local development. Several initiatives of local development in the highlands were implemented in the countries of the European Union, although the concepts have sometimes been built in other areas, as for example natural parks, reserves of biodiversity, reserves of biosphere, “regional” parks, winter and summer slow tourism, many small agribusiness factories for cheeses, liquors, fruits, etc. Diverse reasons justified these implementations in the European Union, especially the specific policies made at national and European level, which strongly incentivized and supported these initiatives, in order to reduce the disadvantages of these regions, mainly due to their weak access and their long distance to decisions centers. Indeed, focused on the sustainable development, the specific national and European policies significantly impacted local development in European highlands, compared with non-European highlands where economic issues and national interest usually lead their development, especially in developing countries. Moreover, the supportive context for local development initiatives lead to new initiatives and also innovations focused on the improvement of these initiatives and the building of new initiatives, including in policymaking. In other words, based on the European Union experience, the implementation of local development could lead to new steps of local development. It is a research hypothesis to be verified in European Union and tested in the other zones. A priori, for the method of the RISE proposal, we suggest using the concept of co-viability, which includes both viability and its regulation, to analyze resilience factors at different scales, representations and local knowledge, access to resources and policymaking in global change context. This point has to be debate with the partner in the next months. In terms of activity to be developed in 2016 in order to build the RISE proposal, firstly there are five visits to each of the European partners in order to better share the common objectives of the RISE proposal, select the local development initiatives for the compare analysis and draft a concept note of the RISE proposal. Secondly, a workshop joining the leaders of European partners with 3-4 leaders of non-European teams will allow to better define the contents of the proposal and to draft a first version.

The Mediterranean basin has been facing the challenge of increasing temperatures and drought due to climate change for several years. This situation threatens the availability of feed resources, the sustainability of grazing livestock and the livelihood of rural communities, particularly those living in marginal rural areas. Given the economic importance of livestock in the Mediterranean, if these effects persist as predicted by the IPCC scenarios (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/), they will disrupt food security in this area and jeopardize small-scale traditional livestock systems that do not have the basic infrastructure necessary for efficient livestock management, nor the early warning systems to address the problem well in advance. According to recent studies, the goat has been shown to provide the solution to face these environmental challenges in the Mediterranean. Is evident that the goat, is ideal due to its resilience and high tolerance to heat and drought, its ability to survive on poor pastures and its high resistance to diseases, thus providing a source of animal proteins (meat and milk) to reduce human malnutrition in marginal areas where other livestock systems are not feasible, and to face climate changes and support agro-pastoral society. In addition, there are advantages associated with consuming goat meat and milk (low-fat content, healthy fatty acids profile, better tolerance and digestibility), so it could be part of the solution to reduce metabolic diseases. Based on these findings, the objectives of the MEDGOAT project are to support viable agro-pastoral agriculture and rational use of agro-pastoral lands by a) strengthening the knowledge of local goat breeds for their climate resilience and promoting the use of these specific breeds in the Mediterranean region b) assessing the potential of local goat breeds, in a perspective of potentiating biodiversity, exploiting their resistance to the effects of climate change, and improving animal management systems (especially feeding practices) to face climate challenges and reduce the water footprint of goat farming, in a circular bioeconomy approach. c) evaluating the impact of the contribution of non-conventional feed resources (e.g., cactus, olive and date co-products), non-protein nitrogen sources (e.g., urea and nitrate) and local plants that can be valorized on both the environmental impact of farming systems and the productivity of the goat and its health. The trials will also make it possible to characterize the quality of milk and meat and develop innovations for their storage. MEDGOAT implements an interconnected multidisciplinary approach that brings together academic and non-academic actors, including breeders and industrialists (13 partners), from six countries (France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia and Morocco) and that covers several disciplines:breeding, nutrition, animal and human health, animal welfare, sociology and economics. With the technical support of one of the world's leading goat experts (ICAR-National Institute of Animal Nutrition and Physiology in Bangalore, India), this project will involve a technological and organizational model of multi-stakeholder collaboration for sustainable goat production to ensure food security and sustainability in the Mediterranean regions. MEDGOAT responds to FAO recommendations by aiming to ensure the livelihood security of farmers in rural areas, especially women, the primary holders of small ruminants in the Mediterranean regions.

Here, we propose an applied project where the foundations for a modern, effective genetic selection scheme in dromedary camels in Alge-ria are laid down through: (i) standardization of dairy/meat/fertility traits phenotyping protocols; (ii) evaluation and standardization of camel identification systems; (iii) implementation of standardized animal identification and phenotyping protocols in pilot farms, and (iv) establish-ment of a first genealogical, phenotypic and genotypic database for further valorization through detection of selection signatures, GWAS analysis, and, possibly, modelling of simple and robust embryonic design for genomic selection approaches. Among the expected impacts: increased milk/meat production, higher profitability of the camel sector, more structured and enforced breeders associations.

In the Mediterranean hinterlands livestock activities are often one of the pillars of the livelihoods for rural families. As strong changes are faced by the livestock farmers, the need to improve the resilience of the current production systems is a major stake. The livestock farming systems, especially sheep and goat, are based on the use of an important diversity of locally adapted animal populations, able to valorise scarce and variable feed resources. Those genetic resources are acknowledged as an important means to increase resilience of production systems. Those resources are dynamics, as there is a co-evolution of the farmer practices and the animal populations, as components of a socio-technical system. This co-evolution enables the adaption of the livestock activities to the change of the context (climatic, biophysical, socio-economic, and politic). The aim of the project is to strengthen the capacity of local livestock systems to cope with changes and hazards and to keep supporting the livelihoods of rural families, by developing a global approach of this coevolution between farmer practices and animal populations. Our hypothesis is that the locally adapted breeds are a technical, but also an organisational object supporting the resilience and the productivity of livestock activities in the Mediterranean areas. The project will study the practices and the dynamics of sociotechnical systems using local breeds in various situations in four countries (Morocco, France, Egypt and Greece). Contrasted territories will be studied, with goat and/or sheep production systems, oriented to meat or milk production, with local breeds embedded in selection schemes, or animal population without formal genetic breeding management. The first part of the project will provide new elements on the farmers’ breeding practices both at farm and territory level. The second part of the project will provide new elements on the resilience of small ruminants farming systems at several time scales (long term and short term) and following several changes (extreme climate events, market evolution, sanitary crisis etc.), and the role played by locally adapted breed in such a resilience. To integrate those two parts, a participatory approach will be developed with public and private stakeholders, so as to share the comprehension of the current situation and use the knowledge built during the project in order to design the evolution of the practices.