OPUS: CRS -- A synthesis of the effects of biodiversity on plant, animal, and human health

Connections between ecology and health have become more compelling and more urgent as society confronts increasingly rapid and widespread environmental challenges, including loss of biodiversity, globalization of species distributions, and changing weather patterns. These environmental changes often result in conditions suitable for local or global disease outbreaks. Once outbreaks are underway specialists in the ecology of infectious diseases are frequently asked to provide timely input, sometimes on disease systems that are not well known. One example is the recent rapid expansion of Zika virus in the Americas. However, appropriate data are often unavailable, for example because the species involved in transmission of an emerging pathogen are not known. What is needed is a better understanding of general principles underlying disease outbreaks and a toolkit of responses that slow disease spread. This project will produce synthesis papers describing aspects of ecological epidemiology and the relationship between biodiversity and health. These papers will be broadly accessible to students, scientists, and policy makers, and will help foster better-informed societal responses to disease outbreaks. One general principle that applies to many (but not all) disease systems is the dilution effect, in which ecological communities with higher species diversity have lower disease risk through a suite of well-understood mechanisms. Unfortunately, applications of the dilution effect to prediction and mitigation of infectious disease outbreaks are compromised by confusion about what it does and does not assert, and by misunderstandings of how it could be applied in policy and management. The project will synthesize current studies and provide an overview of the dilution effect, including the basic biology that underlies it. This synthesis paper be useful for students interested in health or ecology, and health professionals developing strategies for combating infectious diseases. A second synthesis will identify general principles linking biodiversity and health, which could guide future studies by providing more robust conceptual foundations than are currently available. This paper would be useful for disease ecologists and people in allied disciplines such as medical entomology or public health. In sum, these two products, will help move the field of disease ecology towards a more predictive future. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.