There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Zoonotic pathogens are significant burdens on global public health. Because they are transmitted to humans from non-human animals, the transmission dynamics of zoonoses are necessarily influenced by the ecology of their animal hosts and vectors. The 'dilution effect' proposes that increased species diversity reduces disease risk, suggesting that conservation and public health initiatives can work synergistically to improve human health and wildlife biodiversity. However, the meta-analysis that we present here indicates a weak and highly heterogeneous relationship between host biodiversity and disease. Our results suggest that disease risk is more likely a local phenomenon that relies on the specific composition of reservoir hosts and vectors, and their ecology, rather than patterns of species biodiversity. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS.

Related collections

Most cited references 41

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

A Nonparametric “Trim and Fill” Method of Accounting for Publication Bias in Meta-Analysis

Sue Duval, Richard Tweedie (2000)

0 comments Cited 479 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Meta-analysis: recent developments in quantitative methods for literature reviews.

R. Rosenthal, M R DiMatteo (2001)

We describe the history and current status of the meta-analytic enterprise. The advantages and historical criticisms of meta-analysis are described, as are the basic steps in a meta-analysis and the role of effect sizes as chief coins of the meta-analytic realm. Advantages of the meta-analytic procedures include seeing the "landscape" of a research domain, keeping statistical significance in perspective, minimizing wasted data, becoming intimate with the data summarized, asking focused research questions, and finding moderator variables. Much of the criticism of meta-analysis has been based on simple misunderstanding of how meta-analyses are actually carried out. Criticisms of meta-analysis that are applicable are equally applicable to traditional, nonquantitative, narrative reviews of the literature. Much of the remainder of the chapter deals with the processes of effect size estimation, the understanding of the heterogeneity of the obtained effect sizes, and the practical and scientific importance of the effect sizes obtained.

0 comments Cited 359 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

The ecology of infectious disease: effects of host diversity and community composition on Lyme disease risk.

K Logiudice, R Ostfeld, K Schmidt … (2003)

The extent to which the biodiversity and community composition of ecosystems affect their functions is an issue that grows ever more compelling as human impacts on ecosystems increase. We present evidence that supports a novel function of vertebrate biodiversity, the buffering of human risk of exposure to Lyme-disease-bearing ticks. We tested the Dilution Effect model, which predicts that high species diversity in the community of tick hosts reduces vector infection prevalence by diluting the effects of the most competent disease reservoir, the ubiquitous white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus). As habitats are degraded by fragmentation or other anthropogenic forces, some members of the host community disappear. Thus, species-poor communities tend to have mice, but few other hosts, whereas species-rich communities have mice, plus many other potential hosts. We demonstrate that the most common nonmouse hosts are relatively poor reservoirs for the Lyme spirochete and should reduce the prevalence of the disease by feeding, but rarely infecting, ticks. By accounting for nearly every host species' contribution to the number of larval ticks fed and infected, we show that as new host species are added to a depauperate community, the nymphal infection prevalence, a key risk factor, declines. We identify important "dilution hosts" (e.g., squirrels), characterized by high tick burdens, low reservoir competence, and high population density, as well as "rescue hosts" (e.g., shrews), which are capable of maintaining high disease risk when mouse density is low. Our study suggests that the preservation of vertebrate biodiversity and community composition can reduce the incidence of Lyme disease.

0 comments Cited 335 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

All references

Author and article information

Journal

PubMed ID:: 23489376

DOI:: 10.1111/ele.12101

ScienceOpen disciplines: Chemistry

Keywords: Animals,Animals, Wild,Biodiversity,Disease Reservoirs,Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome,transmission,virology,Humans,Lyme Disease,Risk Factors,West Nile Fever,Zoonoses,epidemiology

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Chemistry

Keywords: Animals, Animals, Wild, Biodiversity, Disease Reservoirs, Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, transmission, virology, Humans, Lyme Disease, Risk Factors, West Nile Fever, Zoonoses, epidemiology

A meta-analysis suggesting that the relationship between biodiversity and risk of zoonotic pathogen transmission is idiosyncratic.

Read this article at

Abstract

Related collections

EPA CompTox Chemicals Dashboard

Most cited references 41

A Nonparametric “Trim and Fill” Method of Accounting for Publication Bias in Meta-Analysis

Meta-analysis: recent developments in quantitative methods for literature reviews.

The ecology of infectious disease: effects of host diversity and community composition on Lyme disease risk.

Author and article information

Journal

Comments

Comment on this article

Similar content 299

Cited by 96

Most referenced authors 471