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

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 ulce

SUBMITTER: Morris AL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5142798 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature