A study done in California showed that when a community has a higher diversity of frogs, that the frogs' transmission of the parasite Ribeiroia Ondatrae decreased by 80%, and that the frogs suffered from approximately 50% less diseases. They also conducted the same expierement, but in a lab and it produced similar results. As a result of this expierement, scientists can help decrease the spread of a disease in a community by increasing the biodiversity of a species. This could eventually lead to helping decrease the spread of diseases in humans.
NOS Themes:
Science is collaborative: Many profesores got together to conduct this expierement.
Science is Based on Evidence: The professores conducted an expierement to gather evidence.
Importance of Repeatability: The profesores repeated this expierement many times to make sure that
there data was correct.
Mitchell Gardner, Hour 1
Mitchell, I think that is is very interesting that it is better for frogs to have a greater diversity in their environment. I was wondering why the greater diversity causes better disease resistance. I think it is important to add that if new species get diseases easier then it a large biodiversity could increase the amount of disease transmission. Another NOS theme that I noticed was the role of motivation and curiosity because the professors had to be curios and willing to go collect all the data that they took. lastly, I think that a greater diversity causes less disease because species that are less likely to get a disease comes into a population later than species that are more likely. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=126875
ReplyDeleteMitchell, what if you put a new species that had different diseases in an environment with species that couldn’t combat the disease; wouldn’t that cause mass death to native species.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.concordmonitor.com/home/4443038-95/disease-amphibians-ponds-species
ReplyDeleteThis is a link to another article about the same thing. I still find it confusing about why the diversity increases resistance. It seems that it is the species that come later to the pond and the slower rate of reproduction help, but that still confuses me. One more theme: role of credibility. The study was published by an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.