Diverging effects of host density and richness across biological scales drive diversity-disease outcomes.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Johnson PTJ
PROVIDER: S-EPMC10908850 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Diverging effects of host density and richness across biological scales drive diversity-disease outcomes.
Johnson Pieter T J PTJ Stewart Merrill Tara E TE Dean Andrew D AD Fenton Andy A
Nature communications 20240302 1
Understanding how biodiversity affects pathogen transmission remains an unresolved question due to the challenges in testing potential mechanisms in natural systems and how these mechanisms vary across biological scales. By quantifying transmission of an entire guild of parasites (larval trematodes) within 902 amphibian host communities, we show that the community-level drivers of infection depend critically on biological scale. At the individual host scale, increases in host richness led to few ...[more]
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