Abstract

S. ALTIZER ET AL.’S REVIEW “CLIMATE CHANGE AND INFECTIOUS DIS-eases: From evidence to a predictive framework”(2 August, p. 514) suggests that increased temperatures will favor several attributes of virulent pathogens that will adversely affect host health. Altizer et al. predict a decline in parasite biodiversity but overlook an important problem: This loss could have dire consequences to ecosystems. Parasite diversity benefits ecosystems by regulating host population dynamics, increasing connectivity and stability in food webs (1) and decreasing community-level disease risk. For example, increased parasite richness reduced transmission of the virulent trematode Ribeiroia to amphibian hosts by more than 50%(2). This decrease in disease risk may be due to either increased parasite competition within intermediate hosts (2) or antiparasite immune responses increasing immune genetic diversity in hosts …

Date

November 29, 2013

Authors

Burcu Bolukbasi, Nicholas Berente, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Leslie Dechurch, Courtney Flint, Michael Haberman, John Leslie King, Eric Knight, Barbara Lawrence, Ethan Masella, Charles McElroy, Barbara Mittleman, Mark Nolan, Melanie Radik, Namchul Shin, Cheryl A Thompson, Susan Winter, Ilya Zaslavsky, M Lee Allison, David Arctur, Jennifer Arrigo, Anthony K Aufdenkampe, Jay Bass, Jim Crowell, Mike Daniels, Stephen Diggs, Christopher Duffy, Yolanda Gil, Basil Gomez, Sara Graves, Robert Hazen, Leslie Hsu, Danie Kinkade, Kerstin Lehnert, Chris Marone, Don Middleton, Anders Noren, Genevieve Pearthree, Mohan Ramamurthy, Erin Robinson, George Percivall, Stephen Richard, Celina Suarez, Doug Walker

Journal

Science

Volume

342

Issue

6162

Pages

1041-4042

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science