Frontiers in climate change-disease research

Jason R. Rohr*, Andrew P. Dobson, Pieter T.J. Johnson, A. Marm Kilpatrick, Sara H. Paull, Thomas R. Raffel, Diego Ruiz-Moreno, Matthew B. Thomas

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

The notion that climate change will generally increase human and wildlife diseases has garnered considerable public attention, but remains controversial and seems inconsistent with the expectation that climate change will also cause parasite extinctions. In this review, we highlight the frontiers in climate change-infectious disease research by reviewing knowledge gaps that make this controversy difficult to resolve. We suggest that forecasts of climate-change impacts on disease can be improved by more interdisciplinary collaborations, better linking of data and models, addressing confounding variables and context dependencies, and applying metabolic theory to host-parasite systems with consideration of community-level interactions and functional traits. Finally, although we emphasize host-parasite interactions, we also highlight the applicability of these points to climate-change effects on species interactions in general.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)270-277
Number of pages8
JournalTrends in Ecology and Evolution
Volume26
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2011

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