Increasing spatial scale of analysis weakens and can mask the dilution effect for hantaviruses
9 affiliations
- 1Laboratorio de Virología, Departamento de Microbiología e Inmunología, Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, México
- 2MIVEGEC, Université de Montpellier, IRD, CNRS, Montpellier, France
- 3Departamento de Etología, Fauna Silvestre y Animales de Laboratorio, Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, México
- 4Department of Environmental Science and Technology, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America
- 5George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, United States of America
- 6Department of Biology, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, United States of America
- 7Population Biology, Ecology, and Evolution Program, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America
- 8Organización Panamericana de la Salud (OPS), Ciudad de México, México
- 9Departamento de Ciencias Ambientales, División de Ciencias Biológicas y de la Salud, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Lerma, Lerma de Villada, Estado de México, México
Abstract
Despite its major implications for biodiversity conservation and public health, the generality of a protective effect of biodiversity on zoonotic pathogen transmission (i.e., the dilution effect) remains strongly debated. This controversy may partly arise from the diversity of analytical approaches used, but also from the spatial scales at which studies are conducted. Here, we explicitly test whether increasing the spatial scale of analysis affects the detection of the relationship between hantavirus infection prevalence and rodent species richness, using a global dataset spanning multiple regions. Although the association between species richness and infection prevalence remains negative across all spatial scales, we show that the magnitude of the dilution effect progressively weakens as spatial aggregation increases and can become statistically non-significant at coarse spatial resolutions. These results, which are consistent across world regions, indicate that the dilution effect is likely a general feature of hantavirus–rodent systems, but that its empirical detection is highly sensitive to the spatial scale of analysis. Our findings highlight how large-scale spatial aggregation can mask underlying ecological processes and emphasize the need to carefully match spatial scale to the biological mechanisms under investigation when testing biodiversity–disease relationships. Finally, we discuss the ecological and methodological mechanisms that may obscure dilution effects and outline why scale-explicit approaches are essential for robust inference in biodiversity-disease research.
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BibTeX
@article{viguerasgalvan2026increasing,
title = {{Increasing spatial scale of analysis weakens and can mask the dilution effect for hantaviruses}},
author = {Ana Laura Vigueras-Galván and Celine Arnathau and Oscar Rico-Chávez and Matthew T. Milholland and María L. Vargas and Gerardo Suzán and Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio and Iván Castro-Arellano and James N. Mills and Maria Eugenia Morales and Heliot Zarza Villanueva and Benjamin Roche and Audrey Arnal},
journal = {PLOS Global Public Health},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pgph.0007045},
url = {https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0007045},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Increasing spatial scale of analysis weakens and can mask the dilution effect for hantaviruses
AU - Ana Laura Vigueras-Galván
AU - Celine Arnathau
AU - Oscar Rico-Chávez
AU - Matthew T. Milholland
AU - María L. Vargas
AU - Gerardo Suzán
AU - Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio
AU - Iván Castro-Arellano
AU - James N. Mills
AU - Maria Eugenia Morales
AU - Heliot Zarza Villanueva
AU - Benjamin Roche
AU - Audrey Arnal
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/08
JO - PLOS Global Public Health
DO - 10.1371/journal.pgph.0007045
UR - https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0007045
AB - Despite its major implications for biodiversity conservation and public health, the generality of a protective effect of biodiversity on zoonotic pathogen transmission (i.e., the dilution effect) remains strongly debated. This controversy may partly arise from the diversity of analytical approaches used, but also from the spatial scales at which studies are conducted. Here, we explicitly test whether increasing the spatial scale of analysis affects the detection of the relationship between hantavirus infection prevalence and rodent species richness, using a global dataset spanning multiple regions. Although the association between species richness and infection prevalence remains negative across all spatial scales, we show that the magnitude of the dilution effect progressively weakens as spatial aggregation increases and can become statistically non-significant at coarse spatial resolutions. These results, which are consistent across world regions, indicate that the dilution effect is likely a general feature of hantavirus–rodent systems, but that its empirical detection is highly sensitive to the spatial scale of analysis. Our findings highlight how large-scale spatial aggregation can mask underlying ecological processes and emphasize the need to carefully match spatial scale to the biological mechanisms under investigation when testing biodiversity–disease relationships. Finally, we discuss the ecological and methodological mechanisms that may obscure dilution effects and outline why scale-explicit approaches are essential for robust inference in biodiversity-disease research.
SN - 2767-3375
ER -