Biodiversity and Disease

The power of biodiversity is one of the most important lessons from the science of ecology. Higher biodiversity has been shown to lead to higher productivity (Cardinale et al. 2007), higher stability (Tilman et al. 2005), and greater resilience (Elmqvist et al. 2003). Now, a new study just published in nature supports the idea that preserving biodiverse ecosystems can reduce the prevalence of human diseases (Keesing et al. 2010).

Despite the value of biodiversity we continue to destroy habitat and alter the earth's biogeochemical cycles. Both of these actions are greatly reducing biodiversity and driving the current mass extinction. It seems that there's nothing we can't kill if we put our mindlessness to it (link).

Cardinale, Bradley J, Justin P Wright, Marc W Cadotte, Ian T Carroll, Andy Hector, Diane S Srivastava, Michel Loreau, and Jerome J Weis. 2007. Impacts of plant diversity on biomass production increase through time because of species complementarity. PNAS 104, no. 46: 18123-18128.

Elmqvist, Thomas, Carl Folke, Magnus Nyström, Garry Peterson, Jan Bengtsson, Brian Walker, and Jon Norberg. 2003. Response diversity, ecosystem change, and resilience. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 1, no. 9 (November): 488-494.

Keesing, Felicia, Lisa K. Belden, Peter Daszak, Andrew Dobson, C. Drew Harvell, Robert D. Holt, Peter Hudson, et al. 2010. Impacts of biodiversity on the emergence and transmission of infectious diseases. Nature 468, no. 7324 (December): 647-652.

Tilman, David, Stephen Polasky, and Clarence Lehman. 2005. Diversity, productivity and temporal stability in the economies of humans and nature. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 49, no. 3 (May): 405-426.