The majority of emerging diseases in humans come from wildlife; yet, natural history collection biorepositories, the primary biodiversity infrastructure for the planet, have been largely absent from global responses to emerging infectious diseases. This gap limits our ability to identify disease origins and wildlife hosts, as well as environmental associations that may contribute to disease spillover into humans.

MEPA aims to unite biorepositories across the Americas, with stakeholders in wildlife and human health, field biology, and public health, in an effort to build cross-disciplinary collaborations, strategize geographically and taxonomically broad wildlife and pathogen surveillance, and scale biorepository infrastructure to meet the needs of emerging infectious disease research and response.

Bi-weekly meeting topics are contributed by members and range from benefits sharing, pathogen surveillance, permitting (collecting and international shipping), and biodiversity informatics.

After registering, the MEPA organizing committee will contact you to verify registration, and invite you to formally participate with the network. In the interim, please join MEPA on Slack (mepanetwork.slack.com)!