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Biodiversity inhibits parasites: Broad evidence for the dilution effect
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Significance: The dilution effect hypothesis suggests that diverse ecological communities limit disease spread via several mechanisms. Therefore, biodiversity losses could worsen epidemics that harm humans and wildlife. However, there is contentious debate over whether the hypothesis applies broadly, especially for parasites that infect humans. We address this fundamental question with a formal meta-analysis of >200 assessments relating biodiversity to disease in >60 host–parasite systems. We find overwhelming evidence of dilution, which is independent of host density, study design, and type and specialization of parasites. A second analysis identified similar effects of diversity in plant–herbivore systems. Thus, biodiversity generally decreases parasitism and herbivory. Consequently, human-induced declines in biodiversity could increase human and wildlife diseases and decrease crop and forest production.
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“A rich literature on infectious diseases of wildlife, livestock, and plants demonstrates increased pathogen transmission when biodiversity is lost from some ecological communities (9, 53), supporting the generality of this relationship across nonzoonotic disease systems as well.”
From Impacts of biodiversity and biodiversity loss on zoonotic diseases (2021) · cites this paper as [9]
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“In contrast, biodiversity loss has been shown to often increase the risk of zoonotic diseases, for example, through the dilution effect (9).”
From Impacts of biodiversity and biodiversity loss on zoonotic diseases (2021) · cites this paper as [9]
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“But for decades, we have also known that under some conditions, high biological diversity can decrease the transmission of zoonotic diseases that have already become established (8, 9).”
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“However, a larger metaanalysis found that the dilution effect was as strong for zoonoses as for other types of diseases (9), a conclusion that was robust to criticisms from the authors of the earlier study (57, 58).”
From Impacts of biodiversity and biodiversity loss on zoonotic diseases (2021) · cites this paper as [9]
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Ecological and evolutionary approaches to managing honeybee disease
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“This is true at the species level as well, that is, more diverse communities often reduce the infection of susceptible host species 64, 65 .”
BackgroundMurray, K. A., Olivero, J., Roche, B., Tiedt, S., & Guégan, J. (2018) · Ecography · doi:10.1111/ecog.03625 · Cited by 98
“Some estimates of disease 'risk' (or, perhaps more accurately, 'hazards') are based on these (e.g. tick nymphal abundance as a measure of Lyme disease risk) and their ecologies may contribute directly or indirectly to disease patterns (Civitello et al.”
BackgroundDeterminants of trophic cascade strength in freshwater ecosystems: a global analysis
Su, H., Feng, Y., Chen, J., Chen, J., Ma, S., Fang, J., & Xie, P. (2021) · Ecology · doi:10.1002/ecy.3370 · Cited by 96
The Baltic Sea Virome: Diversity and Transcriptional Activity of DNA and RNA Viruses
Allen, L. Z., McCrow, J. P., Ininbergs, K., Dupont, C. L., Badger, J. H., Hoffman, J., Ekman, M., Allen, A. E., Bergman, B., & Venter, J. C. (2017) · mSystems · doi:10.1128/msystems.00125-16 · Cited by 95
“The dilution effect hypothesis is well supported in human infection disease models, where greater host diversity leads to a reduced risk of infection (55, 80).”
Morand, S., Blasdell, K. R., Bordes, F., Buchy, P., CARCY, B., Chaisiri, K., Chaval, Y., Claude, J., Cosson, J., Desquesnes, M., et al. (2019) · Ecological Applications · doi:10.1002/eap.1886 · Cited by 97
Host genetic diversity limits parasite success beyond agricultural systems: a meta-analysis
Ekroth, A. K. E., Rafaluk‐Mohr, C., & King, K. C. (2019) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.1811 · Cited by 102
Redding, D. W., Moses, L., Cunningham, A. A., Wood, J. L. N., & Jones, K. E. (2016) · Methods in Ecology and Evolution · doi:10.1111/2041-210x.12549 · Cited by 97
“Supporting evidence for how the loss of biological diversity generally is linked to the emergence and spread of infectious disease is contradictory and controversial (Keesing et al. 2010; Randolph & Dobson 2012; Civitello et al. 2015).”
BackgroundHosseini, P. R., Mills, J. N., Prieur‐Richard, A., Ezenwa, V. O., Bailly, X., Rizzoli, A. P., Suzán, G., Vittecoq, M., García‐Peña, G. E., Daszak, P., et al. (2017) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2016.0129 · Cited by 105
“For example, research on specific disease systems like Lyme disease [9], West Nile virus [10] and a few others [11] suggests that more diverse systems often have less pathogen transmission, and thus present a lower hazard, or source of harm to humans, even if the generality of this pattern is still debated [12].”
Forests and emerging infectious diseases: unleashing the beast within
Guégan, J., Ayouba, A., Cappelle, J., & de Thoisy, B. (2020) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab8dd7 · Cited by 106
Jori, F., Hernández‐Jover, M., Magouras, I., Dürr, S., & Brookes, V. (2021) · Animal Frontiers · doi:10.1093/af/vfab045 · Cited by 95
Contrasting emergence of Lyme disease across ecosystems
Mysterud, A., Easterday, W. R., Stigum, V. M., Aas, A. B., Meisingset, E. L., & Viljugrein, H. (2016) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms11882 · Cited by 93
Null expectations for disease dynamics in shrinking habitat: dilution or amplification?
Faust, C. L., Dobson, A. P., Gottdenker, N. L., Bloomfield, L. S. P., McCallum, H. I., Gillespie, T. R., Diuk‐Wasser, M. A., & Plowright, R. K. (2017) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2016.0173 · Cited by 95
Climatic influence on anthrax suitability in warming northern latitudes
Walsh, M., de Smalen, A. W., & Mor, S. M. (2018) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-018-27604-w · Cited by 97
Ecological integrity assessment as a metric of biodiversity: are we measuring what we say we are?
Brown, E. D., & Williams, B. K. (2016) · Biodiversity and Conservation · doi:10.1007/s10531-016-1111-0 · Cited by 100
“Diversity has other benefits as well, such as the reduction of disease prevalence in plants and animals when diversity is high (Civitello et al. 2015).”
Rogalski, M. A., Gowler, C. D., Shaw, C. L., Hufbauer, R. A., & Duffy, M. A. (2016) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2016.0043 · Cited by 92
Evolutionary emergence of infectious diseases in heterogeneous host populations
Chabas, H., Lion, S., Nicot, A., Meaden, S., van Houte, S., Moineau, S., Wahl, L. M., Westra, E. R., & Gandon, S. (2018) · PLoS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2006738 · Cited by 91
Immunological resilience and biodiversity for prevention of allergic diseases and asthma
Haahtela, T., Alenius, H. T., Lehtimäki, J., Sinkkonen, A., Fyhrquist, N., Hyöty, H., Ruokolainen, L., & Mäkelä, M. J. (2021) · Allergy · doi:10.1111/all.14895 · Cited by 93
Müller, J. C., Mitesser, O., Cadotte, M. W., van der Plas, F., Mori, A., Ammer, C., Chao, A., Scherer‐Lorenzen, M., Baldrián, P., Bässler, C., et al. (2022) · Global Change Biology · doi:10.1111/gcb.16564 · Cited by 90
“At the α- scale, it has been shown that results of BEF experiments are realistic (Duffy et al., 2017; Jochum et al., 2020) and that the underlying theory is applicable (e.g. Civitello et al., 2015; Eisenhauer et al., 2016).”
Towards an eco‐phylogenetic framework for infectious disease ecology
Fountain‐Jones, N. M., Pearse, W. D., Escobar, L. E., Alba, A., Carver, S., Davies, T. J., Kraberger, S. J., Papeş, M., Vandegrift, K. J., Worsley‐Tonks, K. E. L., et al. (2017) · Biological reviews/Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · doi:10.1111/brv.12380 · Cited by 86
“Even though recent work has shown some support for the dilution effect (e.g., Civitello et al., 2015), it is not clear how generalisable it is and there are documented cases illustrating that diversity can increase (amplification effect) disease risk (e.g. Mitchell, Tilman & Groth, 2002).”
ResultPost COVID‐19 : a solution scan of options for preventing future zoonotic epidemics
Petrovan, S. O., Aldridge, D. C., Bartlett, H., Bladon, A. J., Booth, H. L., Broad, S., Broom, D. M., Burgess, N. D., Cleaveland, S., Cunningham, A. A., et al. (2021) · Biological reviews/Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · doi:10.1111/brv.12774 · Cited by 89
“Studies have identified a general trend, known as the ‘dilution effect’, where increasing host diversity can reduce a given parasite abundance in both wild animals and humans (Civitello et al., 2015; Huang et al., 2017), although this effect depends on specific conditions, context and on the metrics used (Salkeld, Pad…”
Harnessing microbial multitrophic interactions for rhizosphere microbiome engineering
Afridi, M. S., Fakhar, A. Z., Kumar, A., Ali, S., de Medeiros, F. H. V., Muneer, M. A., Ali, H., & Saleem, M. (2022) · Microbiological Research · doi:10.1016/j.micres.2022.127199 · Cited by 89
Using integrated wildlife monitoring to prevent future pandemics through one health approach
Barroso, P., Relimpio, D., Zearra, J. A., Cerón, J. M. C., Palencia, P., Cardoso, B., Ferreras‐Colino, E., Escobar, M., Cáceres, G., Lopez‐Olvera, J. R., et al. (2022) · One Health · doi:10.1016/j.onehlt.2022.100479 · Cited by 90
“Thus, biodiversity would lead to lower host exposure to pathogens and reduced transmission rates [36,38].”
BackgroundPlant diversity drives global patterns of insect invasions
Liebhold, A. M., Yamanaka, T., Roques, A., Augustin, S., Chown, S. L., Brockerhoff, E. G., & Pyšek, P. (2018) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-018-30605-4 · Cited by 84
Transferring biodiversity-ecosystem function research to the management of ‘real-world’ ecosystems
Manning, P., Loos, J., Barnes, A. D., Batáry, P., Bianchi, F. J. J. A., Buchmann, N., Deyn, G. B. D., Ebeling, A., Eisenhauer, N., Fischer, M., et al. (2019) · Advances in ecological research/Advances in Ecological Research · doi:10.1016/bs.aecr.2019.06.009 · Cited by 90
Wegner, G., Murray, K. A., Springmann, M., Müller, A. W., Sokolow, S. H., Saylors, K. E., & Morens, D. M. (2022) · EClinicalMedicine · doi:10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101386 · Cited by 99
“118,119 For instance, in parts of Africa, a signifi-cant decrease in the number of predators and large herbivore competitors is predicted to result in an increase in the number of rodent reservoir species.”
BackgroundLiu, X., Chen, L., Liu, M., García‐Guzmán, G., Gilbert, G. S., & Zhou, S. (2020) · Oikos · doi:10.1111/oik.07027 · Cited by 85
A multivariate test of disease risk reveals conditions leading to disease amplification
Halliday, F. W., Heckman, R. W., Wilfahrt, P. A., & Mitchell, C. E. (2017) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.1340 · Cited by 80
Towards a mechanistic understanding of competence: a missing link in diversity–disease research
Merrill, T. E. S., & Johnson, P. T. J. (2020) · Parasitology · doi:10.1017/s0031182020000943 · Cited by 85
“Although the dilution effect offers a compelling direct connection between diversity and disease, the search for negative diversity–disease relationships has yielded varied findings, including strong support, contradictory evidence and sometimes non-linear relationships (Randolph and Dobson, 2012; Wood and Lafferty, 2…”
ResultAssociational resistance through intercropping reduces yield losses to soil‐borne pests and diseases
Chadfield, V. G. A., Hartley, S. E., & Redeker, K. R. (2022) · New Phytologist · doi:10.1111/nph.18302 · Cited by 93
Past is prologue: host community assembly and the risk of infectious disease over time
Halliday, F. W., Heckman, R. W., Wilfahrt, P. A., & Mitchell, C. E. (2018) · Ecology Letters · doi:10.1111/ele.13176 · Cited by 70
The Coevolution Effect as a Driver of Spillover
Zohdy, S., Schwartz, T. S., & Oaks, J. R. (2019) · Trends in Parasitology · doi:10.1016/j.pt.2019.03.010 · Cited by 73
“Dilution Effect The dilution effect hypothesis has been integral to the field as it introduced clear linkages between biodiversity and human health [50,54].”
BackgroundDilution of specialist pathogens drives productivity benefits from diversity in plant mixtures
Wang, G., Burrill, H. M., Podzikowski, L. Y., Eppinga, M. B., Zhang, F. S., Zhang, J., Schultz, P. A., & Bever, J. D. (2023) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-023-44253-4 · Cited by 78
“6 – 8 and Supplementary Discussion).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Civitello, D. J., Cohen, J., Fatima, H., Halstead, N. T., Liriano, J., McMahon, T. A., Ortega, C. N., Sauer, E. L., Sehgal, T., Young, S., & Rohr, J. R.
- Affiliations
- University of South Florida (US)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2015-06-11
- Volume
- 112
- Issue
- 28
- Pages
- 8667-8671
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC4507196
- OpenAlex
- W1787861744
- Semantic Scholar
- 30ae28188a18cd22709c7ef13c462acd9260a5ea
- Cited by
- 758
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 38 · 2025: 72 · 2024: 83 · 2023: 61 · 2022: 81 · 2021: 114 · 2020: 78 · 2019: 61 · 2018: 54 · 2017: 51 · 2016: 49 · 2015: 14
- FWCI
- 50.68
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (EF-1241889, 1144244)
- HHS | National Institutes of Health (R01GM109499, F32AI112255)
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (NRI 2006-01370, 2009-35102-0543)
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (CAREER 83518801)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Immunology and Microbiology › Parasitology › Parasite Biology and Host Interactions
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Zoonotic diseases and public health
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Nature and Landscape Conservation › Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Keywords
- dilution effect, biodiversity, parasite abundance, host diversity, zoonoses, disease risk, host-parasite interactions, plant-herbivore interactions, herbivory, biodiversity loss, human disease, wildlife disease
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Disease Susceptibility, Host-Parasite Interactions, Humans, Parasitic Diseases, Biodiversity
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