Impact of climate on Australian, non-Vector-borne infectious animal diseases: A scoping review

Changes to Australia's climate continue to be increasingly relevant for human, animal and planetary health, and have far-reaching impacts on disease emergence and food security. There is a deficit of knowledge in Australia around how climatic conditions are affecting infectious animal diseases, beyond the more obvious spatial distribution changes of parasites and disease vectors. It is critically important for veterinarians and stakeholders to better understand how animal diseases will change with a changing climate. Disease predictions for our companion animals, livestock species and wildlife will allow for better patient care, prophylaxis, planning and disease mitigation. This scoping review sought to survey the literature about the impact of climate on non-vector-borne infectious diseases in Australia for all vertebrate animal species. An electronic search was conducted in four databases. A three-level screening process was conducted on the 489 records captured by two independent reviewers to yield 28 eligible primary research articles published between 1983 and 2023. Frogs and their fungal disease, chytridiomycosis, were the most frequent species and disease studied. Rainfall, temperature and season were the most frequent climatic variables studied. Eighteen out of 21 eligible articles found a statistically significant association between an animal disease and a climatic variable. Of these, eight articles found an association with temperature, while seven articles found an association each with rainfall and season. Study designs were predominantly either cross-sectional or longitudinal. Longitudinal study designs are critical for producing strong evidence of climatic associations and Australia would benefit from more studies of this kind. Overall, there is a need for more research into how climate will continue to drive non-vector-borne animal disease trends in Australia, particularly for our companion animals and our production species.