Epidemiological transitions in human evolution and the richness of viruses, helminths, and protozoa.

ABSTRACT:

Background and objectives

In absolute terms, humans are extremely highly parasitized compared to other primates. This may reflect that humans are outliers in traits correlated with parasite richness: population density, geographic range area, and study effort. The high degree of parasitism could also reflect amplified disease risk associated with agriculture and urbanization. Alternatively, controlling for other variables, cultural and psychological adaptations could have reduced parasitism in humans over evolutionary time.

Methodology

We predicted the number of parasites that would infect a nonhuman primate with human phenotypic characteristics and phylogenetic position, and then compared observed parasitism of humans in eight geopolitical countries to the predicted distrib

SUBMITTER: Amoroso CR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7953414 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature