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The neglected geography of human pathogens and diseases

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 1, Article number: 0190 (2017) Cite this article

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To the Editor — As highlighted in the Feature article ‘Predicting zoonoses’ in the April issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution 1, the emergence of new viruses presents many challenges to humanity, including predicting outbreaks of diseases we don’t even know about yet. The featured PREDICT1 project is a welcome step forward with regards to finding the world's unknown viruses. Yet, amidst the focus on newly emerging diseases such as Zika and avian influenza, an even more consequential, albeit less headline-grabbing, challenge is being missed: we know little about the geographical distribution of the vast majority of ‘older’ human pathogens that collectively kill millions of people each year, much less how such distributions will change given global changes in climate, land-use and economy.

Science and human society are capable of documenting the distribution of species in great detail. For birds and mammals, we know not only the global distributions of each species at relatively fine spatial resolutions2, but often their relative abundances3 and genetic diversity4 as well. When it comes to the distribution of the species that live in or on us, we know far less.

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Figure 1: Comparison of the available global data on the distribution of free-living bird and potential human pathogen species richness.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge use of the EID2 database funded primarily by the EU via the ERA ENV-HEALTH programme (ENHanCE project) and FP7 QWeCI and ICONZ projects. We used the version of this database as published on 15 September 201510.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 15, Copenhagen Ø, 2100, Denmark

    Anna-Sofie Stensgaard, Robert R. Dunn & Carsten Rahbek

  2. Department of Applied Ecology and Keck Center for Behavioral Biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 27695, North Carolina, USA

    Robert R. Dunn

  3. Department of Veterinary and Animal Science, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Dyrlægevej 100, Frederiksberg C, 1870, Denmark

    Birgitte J. Vennervald

  4. Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Ascot, SL5 7PY, Berkshire, UK

    Carsten Rahbek

Authors
  1. Anna-Sofie Stensgaard
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  2. Robert R. Dunn
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  3. Birgitte J. Vennervald
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  4. Carsten Rahbek
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Anna-Sofie Stensgaard or Robert R. Dunn.

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Stensgaard, AS., Dunn, R., Vennervald, B. et al. The neglected geography of human pathogens and diseases. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 0190 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0190

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