ArticlePloS one2013
Species' life-history traits explain interspecific variation in reservoir competence: a possible mechanism underlying the dilution effect.
Article in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 48 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 165 citations in OpenAlex.
- Host phylogenetic distance drives trends in virus virulence and transmissibility across the animal-human interface.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Pooled it
- Geographic variations of the bird-borne structural risk of West Nile virus circulation in Europe.PloS one · 2017Pooled it
- Predictive modeling of West Nile virus transmission risk in the Mediterranean Basin: how far from landing?International journal of environmental research and public health · 2013Pooled it
- Exploring Metrics of Biological Diversity to Better Predict and Respond to Emerging Diseases.Integrative and comparative biology · 2025Review
- Advancing Theory Underlying Diversity-Disease Relationships: Competence in the Context of Life History, Demography, and Disease.Integrative and comparative biology · 2025Article
- Detection ofAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Impacts of Urbanization and Habitat Characteristics on the Human Risk of West Nile Disease in the United States.Biology · 2025Article
- The links between dietary diversity and RNA virus diversity harbored by the great evening bat (Ia io).Microbiome · 2024Article
- The roles of habitat isolation, landscape connectivity and host community in tick-borne pathogen ecology.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Each coin has 2 sides: a positive role of alienCurrent zoology · 2024Article
- Exploring environmental and climate features associated with yellow fever across space and time in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest biome.PloS one · 2024Article
- Intraspecific trait variation and changing life-history strategies explain host community disease risk along a temperature gradient.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Reservoir population ecology, viral evolution and the risk of emerging infectious disease.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Article
- Plant community-mediated effects of grazing on plant diseases.Oecologia · 2022Article
- Cellular and immunological mechanisms influence host-adapted phenotypes in a vector-borne microparasite.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Dilution effects in disease ecology.Ecology letters · 2021Review
- Mammal assemblage composition predicts global patterns in emerging infectious disease risk.Global change biology · 2021Article
- Evolution of pathogen tolerance and emerging infections: A missing experimental paradigm.eLife · 2021Review
- Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Hosts species for multi-host pathogens show considerable variation in the species' reservoir competence, which is usually used to measure species' potential to maintain and transmit these pathogens. Although accumulating research has proposed a trade-off between life-history strategies and immune defences, only a few studies extended this to host species' reservoir competence. Using a phylogenetic comparative approach, we studied the relationships between some species' life-history traits and reservoir competence in three emerging infectious vector-borne disease systems, namely Lyme disease, West Nile Encephalitis (WNE) and Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE). The results showed that interspecific variation in reservoir competence could be partly explained by the species' life histories. Species with larger body mass (for hosts of Lyme disease and WNE) or smaller clutch size (for hosts of EEE) had a lower reservoir competence [corrected]. Given that both larger body mass and smaller clutch size were linked to higher extinction risk of local populations, our study suggests that with decreasing biodiversity, species with a higher reservoir competence are more likely to remain in the community, and thereby increase the risk of transmitting these pathogens, which might be a possible mechanism underlying the dilution effect.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.