Woods Institute for the Environment & Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Ecol Lett. 2013 May;16(5):679-86. doi: 10.1111/ele.12101. Epub 2013 Mar 11.
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.
人畜共患病病原体对全球公共卫生造成了重大负担。由于它们是从非人类动物传播给人类的，因此人畜共患病的传播动态必然受到其动物宿主和媒介的生态影响。“稀释效应”表明，物种多样性的增加会降低疾病风险，这表明保护和公共卫生措施可以协同工作，以改善人类健康和野生动物生物多样性。然而，我们在这里呈现的荟萃分析表明，宿主生物多样性与疾病之间的关系较弱且高度异质。我们的研究结果表明，疾病风险更可能是一种局部现象，取决于储存宿主和媒介的特定组成及其生态，而不是物种生物多样性的模式。
