Preserving biodiversity may reduce prevalence of infectious diseases

A new review in the journal Nature examines the evidence that high biodiversity helps reduce the transmission of infectious diseases. These include both human diseases such as Lyme disease that are transmitted via wildlife, as well as diseases of native plant and wildlife species. Although many questions remain about the generality of relationships between biodiversity and disease, it appears that ‘weedy’ species that persist even as biodiversity is lost are typically more competent vectors of disease than other species. Thus biodiversity loss may increase the relative abundance of species that can amplify disease transmission. An analogous effect may be seen in the human ‘microbiome’, where overuse of antibiotics can allow an increase to harmful levels of organisms that are normally kept at low densities by a diverse microbial community within the human body. The authors conclude that “despite remaining questions, connections between biodiversity and disease are now sufficiently clear to increase the urgency of local, regional, and global efforts to preserve natural ecosystems and the biodiversity they contain.”
The full paper is here.