Abstract
Abstract Emerging outbreaks of zoonotic diseases are affecting humans at an alarming rate. Until the ecological factors associated with zoonoses are better understood, disease emergence will continue. For Lyme disease, disease suppression has been demonstrated by a dilution effect, whereby increasing species diversity decreases disease prevalence in host populations. To test the dilution effect in another disease, we examined 17 ecological variables associated with prevalence of the directly transmitted Sin Nombre virus (genus Hantavirus, etiologic agent of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome) in its wildlife host, the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus). Only species diversity was statistically linked to infection prevalence: as species diversity decreased, infection prevalence increased. The increase was moderate, but prevalence increased exponentially at low levels of diversity, a phenomenon described as zoonotic release. The results suggest that species diversity affects disease emergence.
Highlights
Emerging outbreaks of zoonotic diseases are affecting humans at an alarming rate
Population densities fluctuated synchronously at all sites, yet infection prevalence increased significantly at only 1 site, which suggests that factors other than density alone are involved in disease transmission
More individuals within those species, are added to the community, the number of potential disease-transmitting encounters decreases because species other than deer mice are nonhost species. This type of decreased intraspecies interaction has been termed “encounter reduction” [34] and would occur if increasing species diversity increases the number of competitors in an ecosystem, thereby increasing the amount of time a host species has to spend securing limited resources, in turn decreasing the time spent on intraspecies encounters
Summary
Emerging outbreaks of zoonotic diseases are affecting humans at an alarming rate. Until the ecological factors associated with zoonoses are better understood, disease emergence will continue. For Lyme disease, disease suppression has been demonstrated by a dilution effect, whereby increasing species diversity decreases disease prevalence in host populations. During the past 60 years, the number of emerging pathogens affecting humans has substantially increased [1] Of these emerging infectious diseases, 62% are zoonotic [2], meaning they are naturally hosted by, and persist in, wildlife and affect human populations. A vector-borne zoonosis, is affected by loss of species by a process known as the dilution effect [7], whereby increasing species diversity decreases disease prevalence by diluting the availability of competent hosts with increased numbers of noncompetent hosts. Since their initial discovery in the Western Hemisphere in 1982, several dozen hantavirus strains have been found, each hosted by a unique rodent species [9]; novel hantaviruses have
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