It’s becoming increasingly clear that climate change will have an effect on the spread of infectious diseases, says Skylar Hopkins, a disease ecologist at North Carolina State University who specializes in parasites, and this “solid study” offers new insights. “They’ve given us a quantitative estimate of how big the risk is for viral sharing in wildlife and where it’s going to happen,” Hopkins says. “But we really don’t know what this means for human health.
Carlson’s team wanted to know how that might change in the decades ahead. Their models explored four scenarios for climate change, called Representative Concentration Pathways, which range from 2°C to 4°C increases and forecast how each would alter mammalian habitats and mingling. Then, they factored in which first encounters might lead to viral exchanges—only 6% of the possible pairs harbor viruses from the same families, suggesting those could swap pathogens at a future encounter.
For a concrete example, the team did a case study of Zaire ebolavirus, which they predict has 13 possible mammalian hosts based on known susceptibility factors. Adding in dispersal limitations of species, they estimate that the least dramatic climate change scenario could cause the virus to be involved in more than 2000 first encounters between two species, of which nearly 100 might lead to a jump from one species to the other.
Animals, especially flying ones,have been mingling since the dawn of time. I remember learning about migratory birds spreading flu around the world way back in the 1970s.
Baloney.
Dark perspectives
WOW! Someone should tell China! India! ECT: 😁
Well human already do that with their international travel. But nice try pinning virus spread on climate change.
That's how life goes.
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