Kate E. Jones

Global trends in emerging infectious diseases.

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are a significant burden on global economies and public health. Their emergence is thought to be driven largely by socio-economic, environmental and ecological factors, but no comparative study has explicitly analysed these linkages to understand global temporal and spatial patterns of EIDs. Here we analyse a database of 335 EID ‘events’ (origins of EIDs) between 1940 and 2004, and demonstrate non-random global patterns. EID events have risen significantly over time after controlling for reporting bias, with their peak incidence (in the 1980s) concomitant with the HIV pandemic. EID events are dominated by zoonoses (60.3% of EIDs): the majority of these (71.8%) originate in wildlife (for example, severe acute respiratory virus, Ebola virus), and are increasing significantly over time. We find that 54.3% of EID events are caused by bacteria or rickettsia, reflecting a large number of drug-resistant microbes in our database. Our results confirm that EID origins are significantly correlated with socio-economic, environmental and ecological factors, and provide a basis for identifying regions where new EIDs are most likely to originate (emerging disease ‘hotspots’). They also reveal a substantial risk of wildlife zoonotic and vector-borne EIDs originating at lower latitudes where reporting effort is low. We conclude that global resources to counter disease emergence are poorly allocated, with the majority of the scientific and surveillance effort focused on countries from where the next important EID is least likely to originate.

The delayed rise of present-day mammals

Did the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event, by eliminating non-avian dinosaurs and most of the existing fauna, trigger the evolutionary radiation of present-day mammals? Here we construct, date and analyse a species-level phylogeny of nearly all extant Mammalia to bring a new perspective to this question. Our analyses of how extant lineages accumulated through time show that net per-lineage diversification rates barely changed across the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. Instead, these rates spiked significantly with the origins of the currently recognized placental superorders and orders approximately 93 million years ago, before falling and remaining low until accelerating again throughout the Eocene and Oligocene epochs. Our results show that the phylogenetic ‘fuses’ leading to the explosion of extant placental orders are not only very much longer than suspected previously, but also challenge the hypothesis that the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event had a major, direct influence on the diversification of today’s mammals.

Impacts of biodiversity on the emergence and transmission of infectious diseases

Current unprecedented declines in biodiversity reduce the ability of ecological communities to provide many fundamental ecosystem services. Here we evaluate evidence that reduced biodiversity affects the transmission of infectious diseases of humans, other animals and plants. In principle, loss of biodiversity could either increase or decrease disease transmission. However, mounting evidence indicates that biodiversity loss frequently increases disease transmission. In contrast, areas of naturally high biodiversity may serve as a source pool for new pathogens. Overall, despite many remaining questions, current evidence indicates that preserving intact ecosystems and their endemic biodiversity should generally reduce the prevalence of infectious diseases.

PanTHERIA: a species-level database of life history, ecology, and geography of extant and recently extinct mammals

Analyses of life-history, ecological, and geographic trait differences among species, their causes, correlates, and likely consequences are increasingly important for understanding and conserving biodiversity in the face of rapid global change. Assembling multispecies trait data from diverse literature sources into a single comprehensive data set requires detailed consideration of methods to reliably compile data for particular species, and to derive single estimates from multiple sources based on different techniques and definitions. Here we describe PanTHERIA, a species-level data set compiled for analysis of life history, ecology, and geography of all known extant and recently extinct mammals. PanTHERIA is derived from a database capable of holding multiple geo-referenced values for variables within a species containing 100 740 lines of biological data for extant and recently extinct mammalian species, collected over a period of three years by 20 individuals. PanTHERIA also includes spatial databases o...

Global distribution and conservation of rare and threatened vertebrates

Global conservation strategies commonly assume that different taxonomic groups show congruent geographical patterns of diversity, and that the distribution of extinction-prone species in one group can therefore act as a surrogate for vulnerable species in other groups when conservation decisions are being made. The validity of these assumptions remains unclear, however, because previous tests have been limited in both geographical and taxonomic extent. Here we use a database on the global distribution of 19,349 living bird, mammal and amphibian species to show that, although the distribution of overall species richness is very similar among these groups, congruence in the distribution of rare and threatened species is markedly lower. Congruence is especially low among the very rarest species. Cross-taxon congruence is also highly scale dependent, being particularly low at the finer spatial resolutions relevant to real protected areas. ‘Hotspots’ of rarity and threat are therefore largely non-overlapping across groups, as are areas chosen to maximize species complementarity. Overall, our results indicate that ‘silver-bullet’ conservation strategies alone will not deliver efficient conservation solutions. Instead, priority areas for biodiversity conservation must be based on high-resolution data from multiple taxa.

BODY MASS OF LATE QUATERNARY MAMMALS

The purpose of this data set was to compile body mass information for all mammals on Earth so that we could investigate the patterns of body mass seen across geographic and taxonomic space and evolutionary time. We were interested in the heritability of body size across taxonomic groups (How conserved is body mass within a genus, family, and order?), in the overall pattern of body mass across continents (Do the moments and other descriptive statistics remain the same across geographic space?), and over evolutionary time (How quickly did body mass patterns iterate on the patterns seen today? Were the Pleistocene extinctions size specific on each continent, and did these events coincide with the arrival of man?). These data are also part of a larger project that seeks to integrate body mass patterns across very diverse taxa (NCEAS Working Group on Body Size in Ecology and Paleoecology: linking pattern and process across space, time, and taxonomic scales). We began with the updated version of D. E. Wilson an...

A phylogenetic supertree of the bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera).

We present the first estimate of the phylogenetic relationships among all 916 extant and nine recently extinct species of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera), a group that accounts for almost one‐quarter of extant mammalian diversity. This phylogeny was derived by combining 105 estimates of bat phylogenetic relationships published since 1970 using the supertree construction technique of Matrix Representation with Parsimony (MRP). Despite the explosive growth in the number of phylogenetic studies of bats since 1990, phylogenetic relationships in the order have been studied non‐randomly. For example, over one‐third of all bat systematic studies to date have focused on relationships within Phyllostomidae, whereas relationships within clades such as Kerivoulinae and Murinae have never been studied using cladistic methods. Resolution in the supertree similarly differs among clades: overall resolution is poor (46.4% of a fully bifurcating solution) but reaches 100% in some groups (e.g. relationships within Mormoopidae). The supertree analysis does not support a recent proposal that Microchiroptera is paraphyletic with respect to Megachiroptera, as the majority of source topologies support microbat monophyly. Although it is not a substitute for comprehensive phylogenetic analyses of primary molecular and morphological data, the bat supertree provides a useful tool for future phylogenetic comparative and macroevolutionary studies. Additionally, it identifies clades that have been little studied, highlights groups within which relationships are controversial, and like all phylogenetic studies, provides preliminary hypotheses that can form starting points for future phylogenetic studies of bats.

Comparative Tests of Parasite Species Richness in Primates

Some hosts harbor diverse parasite communities, whereas others are relatively parasite free. Many factors have been proposed to account for patterns of parasite species richness, but few studies have investigated competing hypotheses among multiple parasite communities in the same host clade. We used a comparative data set of 941 host‐parasite combinations, representing 101 anthropoid primate species and 231 parasite taxa, to test the relative importance of four sets of variables that have been proposed as determinants of parasite community diversity in primates: host body mass and life history, social contact and population density, diet, and habitat diversity. We defined parasites broadly to include not only parasitic helminths and arthropods but also viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa, and we controlled for effects of uneven sampling effort on per‐host measures of parasite diversity. In nonphylogenetic tests, body mass was correlated with total parasite diversity and the diversity of helminths and viruses. When phylogeny was taken into account, however, body mass became nonsignificant. Host population density, a key determinant of parasite spread in many epidemiological models, was associated consistently with total parasite species richness and the diversity of helminths, protozoa, and viruses tested separately. Geographic range size and day range length explained significant variation in the diversity of viruses.

Biological Correlates of Extinction Risk in Bats

We investigated patterns and processes of extinction and threat in bats using a multivariate phylogenetic comparative approach. Of nearly 1,000 species worldwide, 239 are considered threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and 12 are extinct. Small geographic ranges and low wing aspect ratios are independently found to predict extinction risk in bats, which explains 48% of the total variance in IUCN assessments of threat. The pattern and correlates of extinction risk in the two bat suborders are significantly different. A higher proportion (4%) of megachiropteran species have gone extinct in the last 500 years than microchiropteran bats (0.3%), and a higher proportion is currently at risk of extinction (Megachiroptera: 34%; Microchiroptera: 22%). While correlates of microchiropteran extinction risk are the same as in the order as a whole, megachiropteran extinction is correlated more with reproductive rate and less with wing morphology. Bat extinction risk is not randomly distributed phylogenetically: closely related species have more similar levels of threat than would be expected if extinction risk were random. Given the unbalanced nature of the evolutionary diversification of bats, it is probable that the amount of phylogenetic diversity lost if currently threatened taxa disappear may be greater than in other clades with numerically more threatened species.

The predictability of extinction: biological and external correlates of decline in mammals

Extinction risk varies among species, and comparative analyses can help clarify the causes of this variation. Here we present a phylogenetic comparative analysis of species-level extinction risk across nearly the whole of the class Mammalia. Our aims were to examine systematically the degree to which general predictors of extinction risk can be identified, and to investigate the relative importance of different types of predictors (life history, ecological, human impact and environmental) in determining extinction risk. A single global model explained 27.3% of variation in mammal extinction risk, but explanatory power was lower for region-specific models (median R2=0.248) and usually higher for taxon-specific models (median R2=0.383). Geographical range size, human population density and latitude were the most consistently significant predictors of extinction risk, but otherwise there was little evidence for general, prescriptive indicators of high extinction risk across mammals. Our results therefore support the view that comparative models of relatively narrow taxonomic scope are likely to be the most precise.