Electrical engineering

Physics

Pathology

Transmissibility (structural dynamics)

Disease

Biology

Zoology

Host (biology)

Biodiversity

Engineering

Virology

Vibration

Ecology

Pathogen

Immunology

Vibration isolation

Wildlife disease

Quantum mechanics

Wildlife

Disease transmission

Medicine

Transmission (telecommunications)

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Significance There has been an impassioned debate in recent years about whether biodiversity is negatively or positively correlated to wildlife and zoonotic disease transmission and risk, suggesting a “dilution” or “amplification” effect, respectively. Here, we demonstrate for an important zoonotic disease (hantavirus pulmonary syndrome) that species diversity can act differently on competing drivers of disease transmission (host density, contact rates, transmissibility) and may cause increases and decreases in transmission, concurrently in the same host–pathogen system. The net effect (dilution, amplification, or no effect) is determined by the strength of the competing mechanisms. Therefore, to move forward, researchers should focus on how biodiversity affects individual mechanisms separately and their net effects if we want to make generalizable predictions across systems.

Species diversity concurrently dilutes and amplifies transmission in a zoonotic host–pathogen system through competing mechanisms