SynthesisEcology2020
Effect of spatial scale and latitude on diversity-disease relationships.
Synthesis in Ecology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 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
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Malaria Prevalence Near African Mangroves: Negative Association With Mangrove Extent, but Positive Association With Mangrove Greenness.Global change biology · 2026Article
- 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
- Adaptive ecosystem restoration to mitigate zoonotic risks.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Review
- Beyond Species Richness: The Importance of Phylogenetic Dimensions of Biodiversity in Disease Ecology.Integrative and comparative biology · 2025Review
- Exploring Metrics of Biological Diversity to Better Predict and Respond to Emerging Diseases.Integrative and comparative biology · 2025Review
- Sweet Cherry Plants Prioritize Their Response to Cope with Summer Drought, Overshadowing the Defense Response toPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Host diversity positively affects the temporal stability of foliar fungal diseases in a Tibetan alpine meadow.Annals of botany · 2022Article
- An eco-epidemiological modeling approach to investigate dilution effect in two different tick-borne pathosystems.Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · 2022Article
- Phanerozoic parasitism and marine metazoan diversity: dilution versus amplification.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Dilution effects in disease ecology.Ecology letters · 2021Review
- The dilution effect behind the scenes: testing the underlying assumptions of its mechanisms through quantifying the long-term dynamics and effects of a pathogen in multiple host species.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Agricultural land use disrupts biodiversity mediation of virus infections in wild plant populations.The New phytologist · 2021Article
- Article
- Biodiversity loss underlies the dilution effect of biodiversity.Ecology letters · 2020Article
- Emerging diseases, livestock expansion and biodiversity loss are positively related at global scale.Biological conservation · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Natural ecosystems provide humans with different types of ecosystem services, often linked to biodiversity. The dilution effect (DE) predicts a negative relationship between biodiversity and risk of infectious diseases of humans, other animals, and plants. We hypothesized that a stronger DE would be observed in studies conducted at smaller spatial scales, where biotic drivers may predominate, compared to studies at larger spatial scales where abiotic drivers may more strongly affect disease patterns. In addition, we hypothesized a stronger DE in studies from temperate regions at mid latitudes than in those from subtropical and tropical regions, due to more diffuse species interactions at low latitudes. To explore these hypotheses, we conducted a meta-analysis of observational studies of diversity-disease relationships for animals across spatial scales and geographic regions. Negative diversity-disease relationships were significant at small (combined site and local), intermediate (combined landscape and regional), and large (combined continental and global) scales and the effect did not differ depending on size of the study areas. For the geographic region analysis, a strongly negative diversity-disease relationship was found in the temperate region while no effect was found in the subtropical and tropical regions. However, no overall effect of absolute latitude on the strength of the dilution effect was detected. Our results suggest that a negative diversity-disease relationship occurs across scales and latitudes and is especially strong in the temperate region. These findings may help guide future management efforts in lowering disease risk.
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.