Swei Andrea, Broughton Heather, Crews Arielle, Lilly Marie, Shaw Grace, Summers Shannon
Department of Biology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA.
Institute for Integrative Conservation, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23185, USA.
Integr Comp Biol. 2025 Sep 13;65(2):376-391. doi: 10.1093/icb/icaf064.
The emergence of infectious diseases is largely driven by spillover events from animal communities into human populations, with zoonotic pathogens accounting for 75% of novel infectious agents. In recent years, the incidence and prevalence of these pathogens have been on the rise, and efforts to understand the underlying ecological principles responsible for the reported increases have highlighted the role of biodiversity loss as a major contributing factor. Despite its role in pathogen emergence, how biodiversity is measured can differ drastically and may underlie variability in study results, making the impacts of biodiversity on pathogen behavior difficult to untangle. Here, we first examine how landscape parameters affect disease transmission and then evaluate metrics used in various disease systems to discuss the ways that different aspects of biodiversity, such as functional, phylogenetic, and trophic diversity, can provide novel insight into the relationship between host communities and disease emergence and transmission. We focus on the tick-borne pathogen that causes Lyme disease in this review and discuss how functional, trophic, and phylogenetic diversity can improve our understanding of the relationship between host community structure and disease transmission. The growing public health burden of tick-borne diseases necessitates holistic thinking to inform actions to decrease the risk of disease to humans and protect natural communities.
传染病的出现很大程度上是由动物群落中的病原体溢出到人类群体所驱动的，人畜共患病原体占新型传染病原体的75%。近年来，这些病原体的发病率和流行率一直在上升，而了解导致报告中发病率上升的潜在生态原理的努力突出了生物多样性丧失作为一个主要促成因素的作用。尽管生物多样性在病原体出现过程中发挥了作用，但生物多样性的衡量方式可能存在巨大差异，这可能是研究结果变异性的潜在原因，使得生物多样性对病原体行为的影响难以理清。在这里，我们首先研究景观参数如何影响疾病传播，然后评估各种疾病系统中使用的指标，以讨论生物多样性的不同方面，如功能多样性、系统发育多样性和营养多样性，如何能够为宿主群落与疾病出现和传播之间的关系提供新的见解。在本综述中，我们重点关注导致莱姆病的蜱传病原体，并讨论功能多样性、营养多样性和系统发育多样性如何能够增进我们对宿主群落结构与疾病传播之间关系的理解。蜱传疾病日益加重的公共卫生负担需要进行整体思考，以便为降低人类疾病风险和保护自然群落的行动提供依据。
