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Zoonotic and vector-borne infectious diseases are among the most direct human health consequences of biodiversity change. The COVID-19 pandemic increased health policymakers’ attention on the links between ecological degradation and disease, and sparked discussions around nature-based interventions to mitigate zoonotic emergence and epidemics. Yet, although disease ecology provides an increasingly granular knowledge of wildlife disease in changing ecosystems, we still have a poor understanding of the net consequences for human disease. Here, we argue that a renewed focus on wildlife-borne diseases as complex socio-ecological systems—a‘people and nature’paradigm—is needed to identify local interventions and transformative system-wide changes that could reduce human disease burden. We discuss longstanding scientific narratives of human involvement in zoonotic disease systems, which have largely framed people as ecological disruptors, and discuss three emerging research areas that provide wider system perspectives: how anthropogenic ecosystems construct new niches for infectious disease, feedbacks between disease, biodiversity and social vulnerability and the role of human-to-animal pathogen transmission (‘spillback’) in zoonotic disease systems. We conclude by discussing new opportunities to better understand the predictability of human disease outcomes from biodiversity change and to integrate ecological drivers of disease into health intervention design and evaluation. This article is part of the discussion meeting issue ‘Bending the curve towards nature recovery: building on Georgina Mace's legacy for a biodiverse future’.
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The influence of vector‐borne disease on human history: socio‐ecological mechanisms
Abstract Vector‐borne diseases (VBDs) are embedded within complex socio‐ecological systems. While research has traditionally focused on the direct effects of VBDs on human morbidity and mortality, it is increasingly clear that their impacts are much more pervasive. VBDs are dynamically linked to feedbacks between environmental conditions, vector ecology, disease burden, and societal responses that drive transmission. As a result, VBDs have had profound influence on human history. Mechanisms include: (1) killing or debilitating large numbers of people, with demographic and population‐level impacts; (2) differentially affecting populations based on prior history of disease exposure, immunity, and resistance; (3) being weaponised to promote or justify hierarchies of power, colonialism, racism, classism and sexism; (4) catalysing changes in ideas, institutions, infrastructure, technologies and social practices in efforts to control disease outbreaks; and (5) changing human relationships with the land and environment. We use historical and archaeological evidence interpreted through an ecological lens to illustrate how VBDs have shaped society and culture, focusing on case studies from four pertinent VBDs: plague, malaria, yellow fever and trypanosomiasis. By comparing across diseases, time periods and geographies, we highlight the enormous scope and variety of mechanisms by which VBDs have influenced human history.
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- PAR ID:
- 10372462
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Ecology Letters
- Volume:
- 24
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1461-023X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 829-846
- Size(s):
- p. 829-846
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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