Biodiversit: Keeping more species around may dilute disease threat; A study on hantavirus and Panama rats suggests another and less obvious benefit to biodiversity — it may diminish the threat humans face from zoonotic diseases

From Miller & McCune:

Biodiversity provides humanity with many benefits, including clean air and water, climate stability and renewable natural resources.

But a groundbreaking experimental study has shown that species diversity is good for something else: It protects people from dangerous zoonotic (animal-borne) diseases.

Scientists investigating an outbreak of hantavirus among farmers in Panama’s Azuero Peninsula discovered the disease was harbored in two particular rodent species that thrived in areas where tropical forest had recently been cleared for cattle pasture. In their experiment, researchers mimicked human-caused habitat degradation by removing all the native rodent species from selected plots of land at the forest-pastureland interface except for the two hantavirus-linked species, the pygmy rice rat and the cane rat. Without competition from other species, their numbers exploded — and more of the rodents became infected with hantavirus.

The study, titled “Experimental Evidence for Reduced Rodent Diversity Causing Increased Hantavirus Prevalence” and published online at PLoS One, was the first controlled test of a theoretical disease transmission mechanism known the “dilution effect,” said its lead author, Gerado Suzán.

Read more from Miller & McCune by clicking here.

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