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，包括生物多样性丧失、物种分布全球化和气候模式变化，生态与健康之间的联系变得更加迫切。这些环境变化往往导致适合当地或全球疾病暴发的条件。一旦发生疫情，经常要求传染病生态学专家提供及时的投入，有时是关于不为人所知的疾病系统。最近寨卡病毒在美洲迅速蔓延就是一个例子。然而，往往没有适当的数据，例如，因为不知道参与新出现病原体传播的物种。现在需要的是更好地了解疾病暴发背后的一般原则和一套减缓疾病传播的应对措施。该项目将编写综合论文，描述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。这些论文将广泛地为学生、科学家和决策者提供，并将有助于促进对疾病暴发作出更明智的社会反应。一个适用于许多（但不是全部）疾病系统的一般原则是稀释效应，其中物种多样性较高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，稀释效应在预测和减轻传染病爆发方面的应用受到了影响，因为人们对稀释效应有什么作用和没有什么作用感到困惑，也因为人们对如何在政策和管理中应用稀释效应存在误解。该项目将综合目前的研究，并提供稀释效应的概述，包括其背后的基本生物学。这篇综合论文对对健康或生态学感兴趣的学生和制定防治传染病战略的卫生专业人员很有用。第二份综合报告将确定生物多样性与健康之间的一般原则，通过提供比现有的更有力的概念基础，可以指导今后的研究。本文对疾病生态学家和医学昆虫学、公共卫生等相关学科的研究人员有一定的参考价值。总而言之，这两种产品将有助于将疾病生态学领域推向更具预测性的未来。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

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.