Globally, scientists believe habitat loss is associated with emerging infectious diseases, or EIDs, spreading from wildlife to humans, such as Ebola, West Nile virus, SARS, Marburg virus and others. The Auburn team developed a new hypothesis, the coevolution effect, which is rooted in ecology and evolutionary biology, to explain the underlying mechanisms that drive this association. We provide a testable hypothesis that we hope other researchers will try to test with their data, as we will be doing. Whether or not these studies fully support this new hypothesis, we anticipate it will provide a new perspective that other researchers in this field can use and build on, to ultimately push this field forward to understand disease spillover and prevent it.

However, until now, even after a wealth of research in the past few decades has explored that hypothesis and found associations between the loss of biodiversity and EIDs, there has been no explanation for where the microbes that cause EIDs come from and how they get to humans. Through our hypothesis, we propose that as humans alter the landscape through habitat loss, forest fragments act as islands, and the wildlife hosts and disease-causing microbes that live within them undergo rapid diversification. Across a fragmented landscape we would then see an increase in diversity of disease-causing microbes, increasing the probability that any one of these microbes may spill over into human populations, leading to outbreaks. Oaks said he is encouraged that the research will impact the way these problems are perceived.

Regards
ALEX JOHN
Editorial Assistant
Journal of infectious disease and dignosis