Agriculture is the largest contributor to land-use change which tends to increase the incidence of zoonotic diseases by increasing contact opportunities for wildlife, livestock and humans. On the other hand, is there any relationship between global warming itself and the outbreak of infectious diseases? A paper published in Science conducted a global meta-analysis of the thermal mismatch hypothesis about host-pathogen relationships. The resulting model showed that fungal disease risk increased in warm climates whereas the frequency of bacterial disease increased under warm abnormalities in cool climates. 

The full article is available at:

Jeremy M. Cohen et al. Divergent impacts of warming weather on wildlife disease risk across climates, Science (2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.abb1702

Contributor: IIYAMA Miyuki (Research Strategy Office)