Beyond birds: rethinking bird-centered pathogen models in light of insect migration

Abstract

Migration redistributes biomass, nutrients, and pathogens across ecosystems. For decades, migratory birds have been treated as the default long-distance pathogen vectors, shaping both conceptual frameworks and empirical models of disease ecology. Yet this bird-centric view creates a profound bias: it overlooks trillions of insects that migrate seasonally across continents, many of them efficient pathogen vectors. Advances in radar, isotopic tracing, and genomic tools now reveal that insect flyways are structured, recurrent, and often intersect with avian routes, creating unrecognized hotspots of co-migration and potential cross-transmission. Ignoring these flows risks misattributing prevalence patterns to bird movements alone and perpetuating incomplete models of pathogen dispersal. We argue that pathogen spread should be reframed as a macroecological process emerging from the overlapping movements of multiple taxa. This requires expanding current frameworks, integrating insects into migration–disease models, and developing infrastructure capable of monitoring aerial biodiversity at continental scales. Such a shift is essential not only for ecological theory but also for applied surveillance in public health, agriculture, and wildlife conservation in a rapidly changing world.