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.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“However, the impacts of defaunation on disease are far from straightforward (71)”
From Defaunation in the Anthropocene (2014) · cites this paper as [71]
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“and few major human pathogens seem to fit the criteria that would make such a relationship pervasive (71).”
From Defaunation in the Anthropocene (2014) · cites this paper as [71]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity
Cardinale, B. J., Duffy, J. E., Gonzalez, A., Hooper, D. U., Perrings, C., Venail, P., Narwani, A., Mace, G. M., Tilman, D., Wardle, D. A., et al. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature11148 · Cited by 7,457 · cited 1×
“This is a perspective that is increasingly embraced by ecologists (e.g., Begon 2008, Cardinale et al. 2012, Randolph and Dobson 2012, Salkeld et al. 2013, Young et al. 2013).”
BackgroundRisk factors for human disease emergence
Taylor, L. H., Latham, S. M., & woolhouse, M. E. J. (2001) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2001.0888 · Cited by 2,835
Bats Are Natural Reservoirs of SARS-Like Coronaviruses
Li, W., Shi, Z., Yu, M., Ren, W., Smith, C. S., Epstein, J. H., Wang, H., Crameri, G. S., Hú, Z., Zhang, H., et al. (2005) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1118391 · Cited by 2,571
Impacts of biodiversity on the emergence and transmission of infectious diseases
Keesing, F., Belden, L. K., Daszak, P., Dobson, A., Harvell, C. D., Holt, R. D., Hudson, P., Jolles, A., Jones, K. E., Mitchell, C. E., et al. (2010) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature09575 · Cited by 2,043
Self-citationEffects of species diversity on disease risk
Keesing, F., Holt, R. D., & Ostfeld, R. S. (2006) · Ecology Letters · doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.00885.x · Cited by 1,642
AIDS as a Zoonosis: Scientific and Public Health Implications
Hahn, B. H., Shaw, G. M., De, K. M., Cock, & Sharp, P. M. (2000) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.287.5453.607 · Cited by 1,234
LoGiudice, K. M., Ostfeld, R. S., Schmidt, K. A., & Keesing, F. (2003) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0233733100 · Cited by 1,160
The increase in risk factors for leishmaniasis worldwide
Desjeux, P. M. P. (2001) · Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene · doi:10.1016/s0035-9203(01)90223-8 · Cited by 1,048
Is a healthy ecosystem one that is rich in parasites?
Hudson, P. J., Dobson, A. P., & Lafferty, K. D. (2006) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2006.04.007 · Cited by 989
Self-citationSpecies diversity: from global decreases to local increases
Sax, D. F., & Gaines, S. D. (2003) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/s0169-5347(03)00224-6 · Cited by 860
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 4
- Begon M, 2008, Infectious disease ecology: effects of ecosystems on disease and of disease
- Esterre P, 1986, Evaluation d'un programme de lutte contre la leishmaniose cutanee dans un village forestier de Guyane franqaise, Bulletin de l'Organization Mondiale de la Sante, 64, 559
- Llanos-Cuentas A, 1987, Research on control strategies for the leishmaniases: Proceedings of an International Workshop held in Ottawa, Canada, 1–4 June 1987
- 10.1111/ele.12094 · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Defaunation in the Anthropocene
Dirzo, R., Young, H. S., Galetti, M., Ceballos, G., Isaac, N. J. B., & Collen, B. (2014) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1251817 · Cited by 4,474
Self-citationSandifer, P. A., Sutton‐Grier, A. E., & Ward, B. (2015) · Ecosystem Services · doi:10.1016/j.ecoser.2014.12.007 · Cited by 1,275
Urbanization and Disease Emergence: Dynamics at the Wildlife–Livestock–Human Interface
Hassell, J. M., Begon, M. E., Ward, M. J., & Fèvre, E. M. (2016) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2016.09.012 · Cited by 865
“However, the epidemiological consequences of changes to such a system are likely to be pathogen specific, and dependent on how trophic reassortment affects the following parameters: likelihood of encounter and transmission between competent hosts, host abundance and/ or density, and infected host mortality and recover…”
BackgroundBiodiversity inhibits parasites: Broad evidence for the dilution effect
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., et al. (2015) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1506279112 · Cited by 758
“However, if parasites are unaffected or even stimulated by host biodiversity, then human-mediated biodiversity loss might decrease the risk of outbreaks, and disease management approaches based on biodiversity could backfire (13).”
BackgroundInfluentialImpacts of biodiversity and biodiversity loss on zoonotic diseases
Keesing, F., & Ostfeld, R. S. (2021) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2023540118 · Cited by 367
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
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
