Biodiversity Loss and Infectious Diseases
When conservation biologists think about infectious diseases, their thoughts are mostly negative. Infectious diseases have been associated with the extinction and endangerment of some species, though this is rare, and other factors like habitat loss and p
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Biodiversity Loss and Infectious Diseases Kevin D. Lafferty
Abstract When conservation biologists think about infectious diseases, their thoughts are mostly negative. Infectious diseases have been associated with the extinction and endangerment of some species, though this is rare, and other factors like habitat loss and poorly regulated harvest still are the overwhelming drivers of endangerment. Parasites are pervasive and play important roles as natural enemies on par with top predators, from regulating population abundances to maintaining species diversity. Sometimes, parasites themselves can be endangered. However, it seems unlikely that humans will miss extinct parasites. Parasites are often sensitive to habitat loss and degradation, making them positive indicators of ecosystem “health”. Conservation biologists need to carefully consider infectious diseases when planning conservation actions. This can include minimizing the movement of domestic and invasive species, vaccination, and culling.
5.1 Introduction We have all been sick from infectious diseases, and this predisposes us to view parasites with disdain. Here, I discuss the importance of infectious diseases (i.e., parasites and pathogens) for conservation. This is not a common topic. Nearly, half of conservation biology texts do not even mention infectious diseases (Nichols and Gómez 2011). Half of those texts that do mention infectious diseases only consider negative impacts of disease. But the story is much richer than this. Infectious diseases play important roles in ecosystems, hurting some species and favoring others. Under rare circumstances, they can cause their hosts to become
K. D. Lafferty (*) U.S. Geological Survey, Western Ecological Research Center, Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA e-mail: [email protected]
L. M. Verdade et al. (eds.), Applied Ecology and Human Dimensions in Biological Conservation, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-54751-5_5, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
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endangered. Environmental change can favor or impair infectious diseases. Sometimes, parasites themselves can be endangered. For these reasons, parasite can give us interesting insight into environmental degradation, making them useful indicators. Furthermore, there are several actions that conservation biologists can take to protect species at risk from infectious disease.
5.2 The Role of Disease in Ecosystems Parasites are pervasive. But due to their small size, parasites seem insignificant players at the ecosystem level. Do their numbers add up? Can they have effects even greater than their numbers would imply? What are their contributions to biodiversity and food webs? When do they control host populations? Parasitism is a popular lifestyle, but exactly how popular is hard to tell because parasitologists have not yet looked at most animal species. What information exists about parasites is often only from one location and rarely for all parasite groups. Some authors have estimated the pr
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