Biodiversity loss underlies the dilution effect of biodiversity.
- Halliday FW Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, 8057, Switzerland.
- Rohr JR Department of Biological Sciences, Eck Institute of Global Health, Environmental Change Initiative, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA.
- Laine AL Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, 8057, Switzerland.
- 2020-08-19
Published in:
- Ecology letters. - 2020
English
The dilution effect predicts increasing biodiversity to reduce the risk of infection, but the generality of this effect remains unresolved. Because biodiversity loss generates predictable changes in host community competence, we hypothesised that biodiversity loss might drive the dilution effect. We tested this hypothesis by reanalysing four previously published meta-analyses that came to contradictory conclusions regarding generality of the dilution effect. In the context of biodiversity loss, our analyses revealed a unifying pattern: dilution effects were inconsistently observed for natural biodiversity gradients, but were commonly observed for biodiversity gradients generated by disturbances causing losses of biodiversity. Incorporating biodiversity loss into tests of generality of the dilution effect further indicated that scale-dependency may strengthen the dilution effect only when biodiversity gradients are driven by biodiversity loss. Together, these results help to resolve one of the most contentious issues in disease ecology: the generality of the dilution effect.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- hybrid
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1111/ele.13590
- PMID 32808427
- Persistent URL
- https://sonar.ch/global/documents/11871
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