Climate change will increase pressure on species to migrate and bring thousands of new chances for viruses to jump from one species to another in the coming decades, a new study reports.
Why it matters: These events could increase the chance of a pandemic in humans. Ebola, HIV, bird flu, SARS — and many scientists think COVID-19 — all started with spillovers of viruses from wildlife and livestock to humans.
- The study, published in the journal Nature, shows how climate change and land use shifts will push pathogens' host animals to novel places where they will mingle with other species for the first time.
- These inter-species connections will expand the reservoirs for viruses, further threatening endangered species and increasing the chances of viruses spilling over to humans.
- Most of these species-to-species jumps could go undetected, the study warns, since current surveillance efforts watch exclusively for viruses jumping from wildlife to humans.
- "This [study] is really stressing that there are lots of cross species transmission events that are happening now, and many more that can happen as environments are changing," says Thomas Gillespie, a disease ecologist at Emory University who was not part of the new study.
How it works: A pathogen's ability to jump from one species to another depends on whether the hosts have a chance to interact and how similar the two host species are to one another....
- There are about 6,500 mammals, including humans, on Earth — all are potential hosts for pathogens. Many are under new pressure due to changes in their habitat driven by warming temperatures.
- Just 7%