Biodiversity limit diseases

2003/01/09 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Ekologia

As for wildlife, the idea is not new, but perhaps it is related to ecological and epidemiological bases.

Lyme disease is a human disease caused by bacteria in North America. People are contaminated by ticks, but deposits are dogs, birds or some wild animals.

Controlling the health of pets is relatively simple, not wildlife. Therefore, at the Millbrook Ecosystem Research Institute they wanted to identify the wild animal with more ticks with Lyme disease. The ticks of 200 animals of 13 species have been analyzed and, after several calculations, it has been concluded that the main deposit is the apple tree. For its abundance and feeding of 40-90% of the contaminated ticks. On the contrary, the ticks of squirrels and sariguia are not so contaminated. Therefore, the greater presence of these two species (increased biodiversity) has determined a decrease in the incidence of the disease, since the effect of mice would be “diluted”. Researchers have speculated that this may also be useful for other arthropod-infected diseases.