Our capacity to predict areas at risk of emergence of infectious animal diseases (ID) and to minimize pathogen spreading is directly linked to our understanding of population dynamics of pathogens within and outside hosts, including interactions within and between hosts and within a community of hosts. These relationships are complexified by global changes (mobility intensification, land-use, and climate changes), which highly influence contacts among hosts and vectors’ distribution. Therefore, there is a crucial need to produce knowledge regarding population dynamics of pathogens. This relies on three main issues, which are: (i) identify mechanisms and drivers promoting an increase in virulence, transmissibility and host-shift, (ii) well understand the impact of host factors as a key parameter of pathogen evolution and dynamics, in particular those provided by vaccination or pre-existing immunity or by host genetics, and (iii) identify transmission routes, including the role of vectors and of the environment in dissemination and transmission to highlight areas at risk of emergence and spread. Addressing these issues is essential for ID management, in providing stakeholders and policy makers with strategies and methods for surveillance, prevention and control of IDs (breaking the route of transmission, detection, inactivation of pathogens…) within the context of global changes. Within the frame of the Research Innovation Action HORIZON-CL6-2022-FARM2FORK-02-03 call, WiLiMan-ID intends to tackle these issues using IDs that each represent both a threat and a model for studying the ecology of infectious animal diseases, thanks to the diversity of transmission pathways and hosts and putative vectors involved. The communities of hosts considered vary depending on the disease and include humans, domestic animals (poultry, horses and pigs) and wildlife (wild birds, wild boars and cervids). The selected IDs are avian influenza, caused by avian influenza virus; African horse sickness caused by African horse sickness virus, fatal neuronal disease caused by West Nile virus (that will be studied together with the Usutu virus as a co-infecting agent); African swine fever caused by African swine fever virus; and chronic wasting disease caused by an atypical pathogen belonging to the prion-like family. The two main innovative aspects of WiLiMan-ID are (i) the integration of fine-grained features of pathogens and host behaviour with large scale observations across different compartments of the ecosystem to gain an integrated vision of ID (re-)emergence, persistence and spread, and (ii) the study of contrasted patho-ecosystems in order to gain a more complete view of their intertwinement. This will help us gain relevant knowledge and develop methods to anticipate and face future, mostly unknown, infectious health threats with better proficiency. Overall, WiLiMan-ID aims at (i) improving the capacity for risk-based surveillance thanks to a better understanding of sources and pathways of emergence and spread of animal IDs, (ii) enhancing the capacity to prevent and control IDs in animals, and their potential impact in human populations, and (iii) improving our understanding of the impact of climate change on pathogen ecology and animal IDs to predict and possibly anticipate with appropriate countermeasures. To tackle this challenge and reach the expected outcomes of the call, the consortium will bring together a strong group of academic and non-academic (private companies, stakeholders…) partners with the wide range of expertise needed to intregrate the multiple levels of complexity (pathogen, host, communities of hosts, territory) of WiLiMan-ID and to interlink complementary disciplines. WiLiMan-ID will be embeded within Prezode and will thus benefit from the network developed by this initiative.