We call for an urgent consideration of ecological and evolutionary approaches to understand and model pandemics in a changing world in order to prevent them. Once again, we argue for transdisciplinary research conducted under the Ecohealth, OneHealth and Planetary Health frameworks. To date, these initiatives have been largely ignored by decision-makers compared to the purely medical perspective that relies instead on the development of curative methods to prevent or control pandemics. However, such frameworks can help us understand the connection between pathogen spread within human populations, inter-specific pathogen transmission within animal communities, and how this may lead to adaptation and emergence. The knowledge generated by this research can therefore greatly improve our capacity to prevent large-scale pandemics.
However, if such knowledge is not considered today by decision-makers, our scientific community could be blamed for not having put the knowledge produced into a “solution-oriented” framework that could be directly used by authorities. Therefore, we also call on scientists working on the evolutionary ecology of pathogens to integrate “solution-oriented“ research, more connected to the field, in order to devise solutions and practical applications of scientific results, emulating recent similar movements in the field of economics and other social sciences 22. Biodiversity conservation, landscape management and theoretical evolution (among others) could all be “solution-oriented” research if applied to relevant pathogen models. Such “solution-oriented” research agendas could improve our capacity to avoid the next COVID-19-like catastrophe.