Community Diversity Reduces Schistosoma Mansoni Transmission, Host Pathology, And Human Infection Risk

Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 21 Jan 2009 - 6:00 PDT

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Global biodiversity loss and disease emergence are two of the most challenging issues confronting science and society.

Growing evidence suggests that these trends are related, with decreases in biodiversity leading to enhanced disease in human and wildlife populations.

Here, we show experimentally that increases in snail community diversity cause a 25-50% reduction in transmission of the human blood fluke, Schistosoma mansoni, which alternates between snail and human hosts.

Snails from diverse communities suffered less pathology and produced 60-80% fewer cercariae â€" the infectious stage to humans. These results underscore the significance of community structure on transmission of complex life cycle pathogens.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences