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

随着社会面临日益迅速和广泛的环境挑战，包括生物多样性的丧失、物种分布的全球化和不断变化的天气模式，生态与健康之间的联系变得更加紧迫。这些环境变化往往导致适合地方或全球疾病爆发的条件。一旦爆发，传染病生态学专家经常被要求提供及时的投入，有时是关于不为人所知的疾病系统。一个例子是寨卡病毒最近在美洲迅速蔓延。然而，往往没有适当的数据，例如，因为不知道新出现的病原体传播所涉及的物种。现在需要的是更好地了解疾病爆发的一般原则和减缓疾病传播的应对措施。该项目将编写综合文件，说明生态流行病学的各个方面以及生物多样性与健康之间的关系。学生、科学家和政策制定者可以广泛获取这些论文，并将有助于促进社会对疾病爆发做出更明智的反应。 一个适用于许多（但不是所有）疾病系统的一般原则是稀释效应，其中具有较高物种多样性的生态群落通过一套众所周知的机制具有较低的疾病风险。不幸的是，稀释效应在预测和缓解传染病爆发方面的应用受到了影响，因为人们对稀释效应的作用和不作用存在混淆，而且对稀释效应如何应用于政策和管理也存在误解。该项目将综合目前的研究，并提供了一个概述的稀释效应，包括基础的生物学，它是有用的学生感兴趣的健康或生态学，卫生专业人员制定战略，打击传染病。第二份综合报告将确定将生物多样性与健康联系起来的一般性原则，这些原则可以通过提供比目前更有力的概念基础来指导今后的研究。这篇论文将对疾病生态学家和医学昆虫学或公共卫生等相关学科的人有用。总之，这两个产品，将有助于推动疾病生态学领域走向更可预测的未来。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.