The DOI matches its Crossref record; 95 of the 95 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Does biodiversity protect humans against infectious disease?
Open accessAbstract
Control of human infectious disease has been promoted as a valuable ecosystem service arising from the conservation of biodiversity. There are two commonly discussed mechanisms by which biodiversity loss could increase rates of infectious disease in a landscape. First, loss of competitors or predators could facilitate an increase in the abundance of competent reservoir hosts. Second, biodiversity loss could disproportionately affect non‐competent, or less competent reservoir hosts, which would otherwise interfere with pathogen transmission to human populations by, for example, wasting the bites of infected vectors. A negative association between biodiversity and disease risk, sometimes called the “dilution effect hypothesis,” has been supported for a few disease agents, suggests an exciting win–win outcome for the environment and society, and has become a pervasive topic in the disease ecology literature. Case studies have been assembled to argue that the dilution effect is general across disease agents. Less touted are examples in which elevated biodiversity does not affect or increases infectious disease risk for pathogens of public health concern. In order to assess the likely generality of the dilution effect, we review the association between biodiversity and public health across a broad variety of human disease agents. Overall, we hypothesize that conditions for the dilution effect are unlikely to be met for most important diseases of humans. Biodiversity probably has little net effect on most human infectious diseases but, when it does have an effect, observation and basic logic suggest that biodiversity will be more likely to increase than to decrease infectious disease risk.
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“However, the impacts of defaunation on disease are far from straightforward (71)”
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“and few major human pathogens seem to fit the criteria that would make such a relationship pervasive (71).”
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Does biodiversity protect humans against infectious disease? Comment
Evi, T. A. L. (2016)
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Increasing spatial scale of analysis weakens and can mask the dilution effect for hantaviruses
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“…highlighted the need to disentangle the relative influence of these factors when assessing the generality of dilution or amplification effects [15,17–19 Funding: This article has received financial support from the ASAMCO project, funded by the French Development Agency (AFD) as part of PREACTS…”
Loss of a belowground mutualist disrupts a fundamental biodiversity-disease relationshipPreprint
Laggan, N. A., Kübler, A. S., Weber, S. E., Niklaus, P. A., & Halliday, F. W. (2026) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.64898/2026.09.23.753874
Metadata
- Authors
- Wood, C. L., Lafferty, K. D., DeLeo, G., Young, H. S., Hudson, P. J., & Kuris, A. M.
- Affiliations
- University of Colorado Boulder (US)
- United States Geological Survey (US)
- Smithsonian Institution (US)
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- University of California, Santa Barbara (US)
- Corresponding author
- Wood, Chelsea L.
- Venue
- Ecology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2014-04
- Volume
- 95
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 817-832
- ISSN
- 0012-9658 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-9170
- OpenAlex
- W2043188267
- Cited by
- 268
- References
- 95
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 45 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 22 · 2014: 9
- FWCI
- 24.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Ecology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1115965)
- National Institutes of Health (OCE-1115965)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Zoonotic diseases and public health
- Life Sciences › Immunology and Microbiology › Parasitology › Parasite Biology and Host Interactions
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Keywords
- biodiversity, infectious disease risk, ecosystem services, reservoir hosts, vector competence, pathogen transmission, biodiversity loss, disease ecology
- MeSH terms
- Adaptation, Biological, Animals, Communicable Diseases, Disease Vectors, Humans, Zoonoses, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Biodiversity, Host-Pathogen Interactions
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