Deforestation-driven food-web collapse linked to emerging tropical infectious disease, Mycobacterium ulcerans

Authors:
Open Access
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Generalist microorganisms are the agents of many emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), but their natural life cycles are difficult to predict due to the multiplicity of potential hosts and environmental reservoirs. Among 250 known human EIDs, many have been traced to tropical rain forests and specifically freshwater aquatic systems, which act as an interface between microbe-rich sediments or substrates and terrestrial habitats. Along with the rapid urbanization of developing countries, population encroachment, deforestation, and land-use modifications are expected to increase the risk of EID outbreaks. We show that the freshwater food-web collapse driven by land-use change has a nonlinear effect on the abundance of preferential hosts of a generalist bacterial pathogen, Mycobacterium ulcerans. This leads to an increase of the pathogen within systems at certain levels of environmental disturbance. The complex link between aquatic, terrestrial, and EID processes highlights the potential importance of species community composition and structure and species life history traits in disease risk estimation and mapping. Mechanisms such as the one shown here are also central in predicting how human-induced environmental change, for example, deforestation and changes in land use, may drive emergence.
Funding Information
  • Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ID0ECCBK12754, ANR-10-LABX-2501)
  • Bournemouth University (ID0EURBK12755)
  • Equipe Inserm Avenir (ID0EH4BK12756)
  • Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (ID0EGICK12757)
  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (ID0ECXCK12758)
  • BecasChile (ID0ER5CK12829, CONICYT PAI/INDUSTRIA 79090016)

This publication has 42 references indexed in Scilit: