ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Species diversity concurrently dilutes and amplifies transmission in a zoonotic host-pathogen system through competing mechanisms.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
64 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 139 citations in OpenAlex.
- Hantavirus infection and biodiversity in the Americas.Oecologia · 2020Pooled it
- Virome Diversity in Three Bat Species in Different Environments in Southern Spain.Microorganisms · 2026Article
- Urban tree canopy fragmentation and child mortality in low- and middle-income countries.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Community Assembly Reveals How Environmental Controls Over Rodent Competition Drive Deer Mouse Density and Hantavirus Infection.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- Leveraging Long-Term Ecological Research Initiatives Into the One Health Synthesis.Ecology and evolution · 2026Review
- Increasing spatial scale of analysis weakens and can mask the dilution effect for hantaviruses.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Parasitiformes (ticks) and Acariformes (mites) vectors and their vertebrate host diversity: A global scoping review.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2025Review
- Hantavirus infections and small mammal diversity in Chile: No differences between protected and unprotected areas highlight the need for public health strategies.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Advancing Theory Underlying Diversity-Disease Relationships: Competence in the Context of Life History, Demography, and Disease.Integrative and comparative biology · 2025Article
- Climate change and health in planetary perspectives: challenges for the health sector.Environmental analysis, health and toxicology · 2025Article
- Reappraisal of the Dilution and Amplification Effect Framework: A Case Study in Lyme Disease.Ecology and evolution · 2025Review
- Unraveling the Mechanistic Links Between Species Diversity and Infection Risk From Zoonotic Pathogens With Direct Transmission Among Reservoir Hosts: Rodent-Orthohantavirus Systems as Models.Ecology and evolution · 2025Review
- Scaling up to understand disease risk: distinct roles of host functional traits in shaping infection risk of avian malaria across different scales.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Hantavirus is Associated With Open Developed Areas and Arid Climates, Highlighting Increased Risk in the Western United States.Transboundary and emerging diseases · 2025Article
- Demographic and zoological drivers of infectome diversity in companion cats with ascites.mSystems · 2024Article
- Impact of infectious diseases on wild bovidae populations in Thailand: insights from population modelling and disease dynamics.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Prediction of viral spillover risk based on the mass action principle.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2024Article
- Bat species assemblage predicts coronavirus prevalence.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Interconnecting global threats: climate change, biodiversity loss, and infectious diseases.The Lancet. Planetary health · 2024Review
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In this era of unprecedented biodiversity loss and increased zoonotic disease emergence, it is imperative to understand the effects of biodiversity on zoonotic pathogen dynamics in wildlife. Whether increasing biodiversity should lead to a decrease or increase in infection prevalence, termed the dilution and amplification effects, respectively, has been hotly debated in disease ecology. Sin Nombre hantavirus, which has an ∼35% mortality rate when it spills over into humans, occurs at a lower prevalence in the reservoir host, the North American deermouse, in areas with higher small mammal diversity-a dilution effect. However, the mechanism driving this relationship is not understood. Using a mechanistic mathematical model of infection dynamics and a unique long-term, high-resolution, multisite dataset, it appears that the observed dilution effect is a result of increasing small-mammal diversity leading to decreased deermouse population density and, subsequently, prevalence (a result of density-dependent transmission). However, once density is taken into account, there is an increase in the transmission rate at sites with higher diversity-a component amplification effect. Therefore, dilution and amplification are occurring at the same time in the same host-pathogen system; there is a component amplification effect (increase in transmission rate), but overall a net dilution because the effect of diversity on reservoir host population density is stronger. These results suggest we should focus on how biodiversity affects individual mechanisms that drive prevalence and their relative strengths if we want to make generalizable predictions across host-pathogen systems.
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.