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A 2021 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1) reinforced that anthropogenic influences on climate systems are causing increases in temperature and extremes of weather and climate events [...]

Current unprecedented declines in biodiversity reduce the ability of ecological communities to provide many fundamental ecosystem services. Here we evaluate evidence that reduced biodiversity affects the transmission of infectious diseases of humans, other animals and plants. In principle, loss of biodiversity could either increase or decrease disease transmission. However, mounting evidence indicates that biodiversity loss frequently increases disease transmission. In contrast, areas of naturally high biodiversity may serve as a source pool for new pathogens. Overall, despite many remaining questions, current evidence indicates that preserving intact ecosystems and their endemic biodiversity should generally reduce the prevalence of infectious diseases., In June 2010, a new organization, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)--patterned after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)--was established to assess changes to the [...]

Biodiversity is good for you Changes in biodiversity have the potential to either increase or reduce the incidence of infectious disease in plants and animals -- including humans -- because they involve interactions among species. At a minimum, this requires a host and a pathogen; often many more species are involved, including additional hosts, vectors and other organisms with which these species interact. Felicia Keesing and colleagues review the evidence that reduced biodiversity affects the transmission of infectious diseases of humans, other animals and plants. Despite important questions still to be answered, they conclude that the evidence that biodiversity exerts a protective effect on infectious diseases is sufficiently strong to include biodiversity protection as a strategy to improve health. Current unprecedented declines in biodiversity reduce the ability of ecological communities to provide many fundamental ecosystem services. Here we evaluate evidence that reduced biodiversity affects the transmission of infectious diseases of humans, other animals and plants. In principle, loss of biodiversity could either increase or decrease disease transmission. However, mounting evidence indicates that biodiversity loss frequently increases disease transmission. In contrast, areas of naturally high biodiversity may serve as a source pool for new pathogens. Overall, despite many remaining questions, current evidence indicates that preserving intact ecosystems and their endemic biodiversity should generally reduce the prevalence of infectious diseases., Author(s): Felicia Keesing [sup.1] , Lisa K. Belden [sup.2] , Peter Daszak [sup.3] , Andrew Dobson [sup.4] , C. Drew Harvell [sup.5] , Robert D. Holt [sup.6] , Peter Hudson [...]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00843.x Byline: Andrew Dobson (1) Abstract: This article is about the nature of democracy in environmental politics, with special reference to the issue of representation, and to the issues of speaking and listening. It is argued that politics has always been regarded as concerned with 'speechifying', and that this has created problems for politicising environmental issues, many of which have to do with 'dumb nature'. The work of Bruno Latour is examined in this context as a way of including nature in politics without resorting to extravagant claims about 'nature speaking'. Latour's epistemological approach to 'politicising nature' is discussed, and attention is focused on the importance for the political (and especially democratic) process of 'listening' as well as 'speaking'. Author Affiliation: (1)University of Keele Article History: (Accepted: 1 July 2009)

Few infectious diseases are entirely human-specific: Most human pathogens also circulate in animals or else originated in nonhuman hosts. Influenza, plague, and trypanosomiasis are classic examples of zoonotic infections that transmit from animals to humans. The multihost ecology of zoonoses leads to complex dynamics, and analytical tools, such as mathematical modeling, are vital to the development of effective control policies and research agendas. Much attention has focused on modeling pathogens with simpler life cycles and immediate global urgency, such as influenza and severe acute respiratory syndrome. Meanwhile, vector-transmitted, chronic, and protozoan infections have been neglected, as have crucial processes such as cross-species transmission. Progress in understanding and combating zoonoses requires a new generation of models that addresses a broader set of pathogen Life histories and integrates across host species and scientific disciplines. doi: 10.1126/science.1177345

Influenza A viruses rarely infect species of the order Carnivora. However, since 2003, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses of subtype H5N1 have infected a wide range of carnivore species. [...]

Parasites can have strong impacts but are thought to contribute little biomass to ecosystems'. We quantified the biomass of free-living and parasitic species in three estuaries on the Pacific coast [...]

Parasites count too Parasites -- and other infectious agents -- can have a major impact on an ecosystem, by targeting a prominent prey or predator species. But a study of the biomass of free-living and parasitic species in three estuaries on the Pacific coast of California and Baja California suggests that parasite ecology should be given more weighty consideration in food-web analysis and ecosystem modelling in future. The surprise finding was that parasites have substantial biomass in these ecosystems, even exceeding that of top predators. For instance the biomass of trematodes -- parasitic flukes -- was particularly high, comparable to that of birds, fish, burrowing shrimps and polychaetes. Parasites can have strong impacts but are thought to contribute little biomass to ecosystems.sup.1,2,3. We quantified the biomass of free-living and parasitic species in three estuaries on the Pacific coast of California and Baja California. Here we show that parasites have substantial biomass in these ecosystems. We found that parasite biomass exceeded that of top predators. The biomass of trematodes was particularly high, being comparable to that of the abundant birds, fishes, burrowing shrimps and polychaetes. Trophically transmitted parasites and parasitic castrators subsumed more biomass than did other parasitic functional groups. The extended phenotype biomass controlled by parasitic castrators sometimes exceeded that of their uninfected hosts. The annual production of free-swimming trematode transmission stages was greater than the combined biomass of all quantified parasites and was also greater than bird biomass. This biomass and productivity of parasites implies a profound role for infectious processes in these estuaries., Author(s): Armand M. Kuris [sup.1] , Ryan F. Hechinger [sup.1] , Jenny C. Shaw [sup.1] , Kathleen L. Whitney [sup.1] , Leopoldina Aguirre-Macedo [sup.2] , Charlie A. Boch [sup.1] , [...]

Disease may play a critical role in invasions by nonnative plants and animals that currently threaten global biodiversity. For example, a generalist viral pathogen has been recently implicated in one of the most extensive plant invasions worldwide, the invasion and domination of California's perennial grasslands by exotic annual grasses. To date, disease has never been quantitatively assessed as a cause of this invasion. Using a model with field-estimated parameters, we demonstrate that pathogen presence was necessary to reverse competitive outcome and to allow exotic annual grass invasion and dominance. Although pathogen-induced reversal of a competitive hierarchy has been suggested as a mechanism of species invasion, here we quantitatively demonstrate the importance of this phenomenon by using field-derived parameters in a dynamical model. Pathogen-mediated reversals in competitive balance may be critically important for understanding past, and predicting future, invasions. barley yellow dwarf virus | California grassland | disease ecology | integrodifference model | invasion

The provisioning of sustaining goods and services that we obtain from natural ecosystems is a strong economic justification for the conservation of biological diversity. Understanding the relationship between these goods and services and changes in the size, arrangement, and quality of natural habitats is a fundamental challenge of natural resource management. In this paper, we describe a new approach to assessing the implications of habitat loss for loss of ecosystem services by examining how the provision of different ecosystem services is dominated by species from different trophic levels. We then develop a mathematical model that illustrates how declines in habitat quality and quantity lead to sequential losses of trophic diversity. The model suggests that declines in the provisioning of services will initially be slow but will then accelerate as species from higher trophic levels are lost at faster rates. Comparison of these patterns with empirical examples of ecosystem collapse (and assembly) suggest similar patterns occur in natural systems impacted by anthropogenic change. In general, ecosystem goods and services provided by species in the upper trophic levels will be lost before those provided by species lower in the food chain. The decrease in terrestrial food chain length predicted by the model parallels that observed in the oceans following overexploitation. The large area requirements of higher trophic levels make them as susceptible to extinction as they are in marine systems where they are systematically exploited. Whereas the traditional species-area curve suggests that 50% of species are driven extinct by an order-of-magnitude decline in habitat abundance, this magnitude of loss may represent the loss of an entire trophic level and all the ecosystem services performed by the species on this trophic level. Key words: biodiversity; conservation; ecosystem function; ecosystem services; food web; Little Rock Lake; species--area; species loss; trophic collapse.

Parasitism is the most common animal lifestyle, yet food webs rarely include parasites. The few earlier studies have indicated that including parasites leads to obvious increases in species richness, number of links, and food chain length. A less obvious result was that adding parasites slightly reduced connectance, a key metric considered to affect food web stability. However, reported reductions in connectance after the addition of parasites resulted from an inappropriate calculation. Two alternative corrective approaches applied to four published studies yield an opposite result: parasites increase connectance, sometimes dramatically. In addition, we find that parasites can greatly affect other food web statistics, such as nestedness (asymmetry of interactions), chain length, and linkage density. Furthermore, whereas most food webs find that top trophic levels are least vulnerable to natural enemies, the inclusion of parasites revealed that mid-trophic levels, not low trophic levels, suffered the highest vulnerability to natural enemies. These results show that food webs are very incomplete without parasites. Most notably, recognition of parasite links may have important consequences for ecosystem stability because they can increase connectance and nestedness. connectance | parasitism | trophic | predation | trematode

An explanation of the terms polity and membership and their relationship to politics with reference to ecological citizenship is presented. Citizenship is of importance in the environmental debate as an intellectual challenge and as an answer to the question of how a society can be maintained.

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2006.00571.x Byline: Andrew Dobson (1) Abstract: This paper analyses the account of political obligation given by cosmopolitans and concludes that this account, which depends on a weak or thin connection between members of common humanity, leaves a motivational vacuum at the heart of cosmopolitanism. An alternative view, according to which material ties that bind prompt obligations of justice in a globalising world, is offered. This is 'thick cosmopolitanism'. Author Affiliation: (1)Open University Article History: (Accepted: 25 July 2005)

In the northeast United States, control of West Nile virus (WNV) vectors has been unfocused because of a lack of accurate knowledge about the roles different mosquitoes play in WNV [...]

Infectious diseases can cause rapid population declines or species extinctions. Many pathogens of terrestrial and marine taxa are sensitive to temperature, rainfall, and humidity, creating synergisms that could affect biodiversity. Climate warming can increase pathogen development and survival rates, disease transmission, and host susceptibility. Although most host-parasite systems are predicted to experience more frequent or severe disease impacts with warming, a subset of pathogens might decline with warming, releasing hosts from disease. Recently, changes in El Nino--Southern Oscillation events have had a detectable influence on marine and terrestrial pathogens, including coral diseases, oyster pathogens, crop pathogens, Rift Valley fever, and human cholera. To improve our ability to predict epidemics in wild populations, it will be necessary to separate the independent and interactive effects of multiple climate drivers on disease impact., Infectious diseases are strong biotic forces that can threaten biodiversity by catalyzing population declines and accelerating extinctions. Pathogens are implicated in recent declines of Australian and Central American frogs (1, [...]

An analytical and typological approach to environmental sustainability overcomes the limitations of the definitional and discursive methodologies in sustainability policies. The strategy focuses on the interlink between environmental sustainability, sustainable development and social justice and proposes diverse conceptions and packages of sustainability based on human welfare. Although social justice is central to discourses on sustainability policies, the potential appropriate regime of social justice varies in conceptions of environmental sustainability and sustainable development.

The role that pathogens play in structuring ecological communities needs to be examined from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. This paper provides a brief introduction to the ecology and epidemiology of brucellosis in Yellowstone National Park. Observed patterns of infection for brucellosis in bison in national parks in the United States suggest that Brucella has a relatively sharply defined threshold for establishment and that the proportion of the host population infected increases as a relatively simple function of population density. Unfortunately, the threshold population for Brucella establishment in bison is low, a herd of at least 200 individuals; this makes it very hard to eradicate Brucella from wild populations. Simple calculations based on observed prevalence and recruitment data for the Yellowstone bison herd suggest that unacceptably high levels of culling would be required to eradicate brucellosis in the park. A simple mathematical model is used to describe aspects of the population dynamics of Brucella. The analyses suggest that an understanding of infectious disease dynamics is crucial to the management and conservation of wild and domestic ungulate species in and around national parks and other nature reserves. The consequences of disease control for the maintenance of biodiversity in other natural and captive communities need to be better understood. Key words: bison; Brucella; cattle; disease ecology; elk; epidemiology; pathogen; population dynamics; Yellowstone., INTRODUCTION Ecologists are beginning to show interest in models for pathogens that infect more than one host species. This work develops from the earlier studies of Holt and Pickering (Holt [...]

Biodiversity might be in decline, but the flora and fauna of academic publishing on the environment is alive and well. The 'environmental problematic' has found its way into disciplinary nooks [...]

Biodiversity might be in decline, but the flora and fauna of academic publishing on the environment is alive and well. The 'environmental problematic' has found its way into disciplinary nooks [...]

Biodiversity might be in decline, but the flora and fauna of academic publishing on the environment is alive and well. The 'environmental problematic' has found its way into disciplinary nooks [...]

Biodiversity might be in decline, but the flora and fauna of academic publishing on the environment is alive and well. The 'environmental problematic' has found its way into disciplinary nooks [...]

Biodiversity might be in decline, but the flora and fauna of academic publishing on the environment is alive and well. The 'environmental problematic' has found its way into disciplinary nooks [...]

Biodiversity might be in decline, but the flora and fauna of academic publishing on the environment is alive and well. The 'environmental problematic' has found its way into disciplinary nooks [...]

Biodiversity might be in decline, but the flora and fauna of academic publishing on the environment is alive and well. The 'environmental problematic' has found its way into disciplinary nooks [...]

Biodiversity might be in decline, but the flora and fauna of academic publishing on the environment is alive and well. The 'environmental problematic' has found its way into disciplinary nooks [...]

Biodiversity might be in decline, but the flora and fauna of academic publishing on the environment is alive and well. The 'environmental problematic' has found its way into disciplinary nooks [...]

From the plagues of biblical times to the HIV pandemic of today, infectious diseases have played an indisputably major role in human history. The continual expansion of human populations since [...]

Hartley et al. [1] have recently proposed an epidemiological model for the dynamics of cholera that explicitly incorporates a hyperinfectious stage of the pathogen Vibrio cholerae, following laboratory findings that [...]

Author(s): Mark E. Torchin (corresponding author) [1]; Kevin D. Lafferty [2]; Andrew P. Dobson [3]; Valerie J. McKenzie [1]; Armand M. Kuris [1] Damage caused by introduced species results from [...]

Byline: Andrew Dobson, Stephen Quilley, William Young This paper draws on a series of five ESRC-funded seminars held between 2006 and 2008 on 'Sustainability as competitive advantage in higher education in the UK'. We sketch the background to sustainability in HE, distinguishing between teaching about and for sustainability and arguing that the move to latter has prompted questions about the sustainability performance of universities themselves. We outline the rationale for the seminar series - an analysis of the degree to which the reluctance of senior managers to embrace sustainability can be overcome by the promise of competitive advantage - and then discuss the lessons we learned from the seminars regarding the successful implementation of sustainability strategies in HEIs. We then analyse what 'establishing competitive advantage' in the HE sector might entail, generically and offer some suggestions as to what a specific instantiation of this might look like, guided by the idea of creating 'sustainable communities'.