Kosoy Michael, Kosoy Roman
Division of Vector-Borne Diseases Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Fort Collins CO USA.
Global Health Asia Mahidol University Bangkok Thailand.
Evol Appl. 2017 Jun 29;11(4):394-403. doi: 10.1111/eva.12503. eCollection 2018 Apr.
More is not automatically better. Generation and accumulation of information reflecting the complexity of zoonotic diseases as ecological systems do not necessarily lead to improved interpretation of the obtained information and understanding of these complex systems. The traditional conceptual framework for analysis of diseases ecology is neither designed for, nor adaptable enough, to absorb the mass of diverse sources of relevant information. The multidirectional and multidimensional approaches to analyses form an inevitable part in defining a role of zoonotic pathogens and animal hosts considering the complexity of their inter-relations. And the more data we have, the more involved the interpretation needs to be. The keyword for defining the roles of microbes as pathogens, animals as hosts, and environmental parameters as infection drivers is "functional importance." Microbes can act as pathogens toward their host only if/when they recognize the animal organism as the target. The same is true when the host recognizes the microbe as a pathogen rather than harmless symbiont based on the context of its occurrence in that host. Here, we propose conceptual tools developed in the realm of the interdisciplinary sciences of complexity and biosemiotics for extending beyond the currently dominant mindset in ecology and evolution of infectious diseases. We also consider four distinct hierarchical levels of perception guiding how investigators can approach zoonotic agents, as a subject of their research, representing differences in emphasizing particular elements and their relations versus more unified systemic approaches.
更多并不必然意味着更好。像生态系统那样生成和积累反映人畜共患病复杂性的信息，并不一定会带来对所获信息的更好解读以及对这些复杂系统的更好理解。传统的疾病生态学分析概念框架既不是为吸收大量多样的相关信息源而设计的，也没有足够的适应性来做到这一点。考虑到人畜共患病病原体与动物宿主之间相互关系的复杂性，多方向和多维度的分析方法在界定人畜共患病原体和动物宿主的作用方面成为一个必然组成部分。而且我们拥有的数据越多，解读就需要越深入。界定微生物作为病原体、动物作为宿主以及环境参数作为感染驱动因素的作用的关键词是“功能重要性”。只有当微生物将动物机体识别为目标时，它们才会对宿主发挥病原体的作用。当宿主根据微生物在该宿主中的出现情况将其识别为病原体而非无害共生体时，情况也是如此。在此，我们提出在复杂性和生物符号学等跨学科领域开发的概念工具，以超越目前传染病生态学和进化领域占主导地位的思维模式。我们还考虑了四个不同的层次化认知水平，这些水平指导研究人员如何将人畜共患病原体作为其研究对象来进行研究，这体现了在强调特定元素及其关系与更统一的系统方法之间的差异。
