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天气模式的变化，生态与健康之间的联系变得更加引人注目和紧迫。这些环境变化往往导致适合局部或全球疾病暴发的条件。一旦疫情爆发，传染病生态学的专家经常被要求提供及时的信息，有时是关于不为人所知的疾病系统。最近寨卡病毒在美洲的迅速扩张就是一个例子。然而，通常无法获得适当的数据，例如，因为参与传播新出现的病原体的物种未知。需要的是更好地理解疾病暴发背后的一般原则，以及减缓疾病传播的应对措施工具包。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。这些论文将被学生、科学家和政策制定者广泛获取，并将有助于促进更知情的社会对疾病暴发的反应。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，即物种多样性较高的生态群落通过一套众所周知的机制降低疾病风险。不幸的是，稀释效应在预测和缓解传染病暴发方面的应用受到了损害，因为对它的作用和不主张的混淆，以及对如何将其应用于政策和管理的误解。该项目将综合目前的研究，并提供稀释效应的概述，包括其基础生物学。这篇综合论文对对健康或生态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。第二个综合将确定将生物多样性和健康联系在一起的一般原则，这可能通过提供比目前可用的更强大的概念基础来指导未来的研究。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领域走向更具预测性的未来。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.