Subtype diversity and reassortment potential for co-circulating avian influenza viruses at a diversity hot spot

1. Biological diversity has long been used to measure ecological health. While evidence exists from many ecosystems that declines in host biodiversity may lead to greater risk of disease emergence, the role of pathogen diversity in the emergence process remains poorly understood. Particularly, because a more diverse pool of pathogen types provides more ways in which evolutionary innovations may arise, we suggest that host–pathogen systems with high pathogen diversity are more prone to disease emergence than systems with relatively homogeneous pathogen communities. We call this prediction the diversity-emergence hypothesis. 2. To show how this hypothesis could be tested, we studied a system comprised of North American shorebirds and their associated low-pathogenicity avian influenza (LPAI) viruses. These viruses are important as a potential source of genetic innovations in influenza. A theoretical contribution of this study is an expression predicting the rate of viral subtype reassortme...

1. 生物多样性（Biological diversity）长期以来被用于评估生态健康水平。尽管诸多生态系统的研究证据表明，宿主生物多样性下降可能提升疾病新发风险，但病原体多样性在疾病新发过程中的作用仍未得到充分阐释。尤为关键的是，更为多样的病原体类型库可为进化创新提供更多潜在发生路径，因此我们提出：相较于病原体群落相对均质的宿主-病原体系统（host–pathogen systems），具备高病原体多样性的宿主-病原体系统更易发生疾病新发事件。我们将该预测命名为多样性-出现假说（diversity-emergence hypothesis）。
2. 为验证该假说的可行性，我们以北美滨鸟及其关联的低致病性禽流感（low-pathogenicity avian influenza, LPAI）病毒为研究对象开展了相关研究。此类病毒作为流感病毒遗传创新的潜在来源，具有重要研究价值。本研究的理论贡献在于构建了可预测病毒亚型重配速率的表达式……