Why Wildpro?

Worldwide, professionals and field workers involved in the health and management of wild animals, whether captive or free-ranging (with the boundaries having become rather blurred),¹¹ commonly have to manage situations involving species or conditions with which they are not familiar. In this shrinking world, expanding human populations are coming into contact with species that were previously geographically distant; hosts, vectors, and their associated pathogens are being transported around the world; and climate change is affecting the range of various species, including pathogens and their vectors. Never has there been a more urgent need for rapid access to up-to-date, reliable, cross-disciplinary, and professional-level information.⁵

Many publications, including this book and its previous editions; other books based on a single taxon or disease; a multitude of journals and conference proceedings, are available and contain large amounts of information.⁷ However, to access these resources, it is first necessary to be aware of their existence and the information in those publications has to be available when needed. Many organizations are addressing the need for publications to be more widely available in the developing world, but much information is still not easily accessible and is either out of print or not digitized. Many people do not know where, on the ever-expanding World Wide Web, to find the information they need or Internet access is unavailable to them. Conversely, a huge amount of material is now available online with no proper accreditation, and a need has arisen for ways to identify dependable, trustworthy information.⁷ Finding and extracting information takes time, and several systems have been developed in an attempt to make it easier to search for and find specialist material.¹⁴

Inspiration and Proof of Concept

Wildpro was conceived by Suzanne Morgan-Jackson (Boardman) and F. Joshua Dein as a way to make information on wildlife health and management accessible to people who need to make decisions impacting wild animals.³ The Wildpro prototype was distributed to more than 300 wildlife professionals (veterinarians, zoo directors and curators, wildlife managers, biologists, CITES [Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species] officials) in 61 countries. Of the respondents, 96% indicated that it would be useful, and 82% thought they would use it regularly.² Wildpro is unique because of the depth and breadth of information it contains. Making full use of the almost limitless capacity that the electronic medium provides, it combines information on species (their natural history), husbandry, pathogens, diseases, and treatment, all in one place, with extensive use of hyperlinks: wherever a logical link exists between two pieces of information, Wildpro hyperlinks them.

Structure and Design

Wildpro was developed around the basic concept that the interaction of three factors—the organism, the disease-producing agent, and the environment—results in either health or disease.^5,6 Unlike any other information resource (particularly many databases), Wildpro was designed first on the basis of what information the end-users needed to access, rather than on the easiest way to input data, with the aim to present information in a practical, intuitive format and with rich use of hyperlinks.³

The structure of Wildpro is based on the logical framework of a series of taxonomic trees: the familiar taxonomic tree for species and similar branching trees for other components such as chemicals. Naturally, the section on Species follows the taxonomic trees used for living species: Kingdom—Phylum—Class—Order—Family—Genus—Species. Confusion may arise as taxonomies change; therefore, the major taxonomic resources that have been used in constructing the pages are stated. Additionally, alternative names for a species, whether taxonomic or vernacular, are given, whenever possible, to minimize confusion. In a similar manner, the Diseases section descends from “Diseases” to “Viral Diseases,” “Bacterial Diseases,” “Toxic Diseases” and so on and then to individual diseases. Chemicals are subdivided into “metals, minerals, and simple molecules,” “gross nutrients, vitamins, etc.” and “complex chemical agents” (e.g., drugs used in animal treatment as well as toxic chemicals). The other sections are subdivided in similar branching pathways.

This system offers a logical structure within which information is presented and allows data to be provided at different levels of detail for different audiences. For example, where a disease has been covered in depth, summary information (as in a review paper) has been provided on the main page for that disease, and more detailed information that may be needed by students and researchers is available in a set of linked “literature report” pages. The structured format of the pages facilitates access to information; when certain data are unavailable, it is clearly mentioned in the hope of encouraging researchers or clinicians to fill these gaps.

Techniques—“How to”

The “How to,” or techniques, section includes topics such as husbandry, disease investigation, and group and individual animal veterinary care, as well as details of specific techniques such as drug administration methods in different species. Individual technique pages not only provide descriptions (some with annotated pictures or video clips) but also indicate the equipment required and give cautions regarding risks, skill levels, and legal and ethical considerations (e.g., surgical techniques should only be carried out by a qualified veterinarian).

Referencing and Refereeing

All information in Wildpro is clearly referenced back to its original source, that is, its provenance is shown.^6,7 A wide variety of reference types has been used, including websites, datasheets, internal records of organizations (e.g., animal health records) and personal communications, along with journal papers, books, proceedings, and theses. Alphanumerical coding ensures that the type of reference can be recognized at a glance (J is a refereed journal, B is a book, etc.) and that the details of the reference may be accessed easily, with each paper, book chapter (or part of a chapter, if different sections were written by different authors) or website page having its own unique identifier. All data within the Wildpro encyclopedia have also been refereed by experts within the relevant fields.⁷