When they studied a mysterious fungal infection ravaging the world's amphibian populations, researchers at Oregon State University uncovered yet another reason to value biodiversity. In a paper recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors found that increased species richness decreased both the prevalence and the severity of the disease. The more amphibian species the researchers added to a controlled environment, the smaller the percentage of animals that died from the infection. "If you manipulate the diversity of the system," says Andrew Blaustein, a conservation biologist and co-author of the paper, "it dilutes the effects of the disease." Some species may be poor hosts, for example, and others may not get infected at all. The combined effect is a slowing of the overall transmission of the disease.
展开▼
