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Disease hotspots mapped

A letter in Nature this week looks at “Global trends in emerging infectious diseases.” ((Kate E. Jones, Nikkita G. Patel, Marc A. Levy, Adam Storeygard, Deborah Balk, John L. Gittleman & Peter Daszak. Nature 451, 990-993 (21 February 2008); doi:10.1038/nature06536.)) It includes some interesting maps, including these:

diseases.bmp

They show the global distribution of relative risk of an emerging infectious disease (EID) event caused by: (a) zoonotic pathogens from wildlife, (b) zoonotic pathogens from non-wildlife, (c) drug-resistant pathogens and (d) vector-borne pathogens. That’s based on climate, human population density and growth, and wildlife host species richness. Note in particular the map in the top right-hand corner: basically risk of zoonotic pathogens jumping to humans from livestock. Compare this livestock density ((FAO has more data on this.)):

livestock-density.bmp

Not a great match with density of domesticated animals. Maybe the correlation would be better with livestock diversity?

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SBSTTA discusses agricultural biodiversity

The 13th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) of the Convention on Biological Diversity has been meeting all week here in the FAO building in Rome. I only mention it because the agenda includes discussion of a review of implementation of the CBD’s programme of work on agricultural biodiversity. You can read about that discussion and various side events at UKabc and IISD. If you’re taking part and would like to share your thoughts and impressions, let us know. I did sit in on one session as an observer, but really, I have no idea what was going on.

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Talking about health and biodiversity

The 2nd International Conference on Health and Biodiversity will kick off next week in sunny Galway, Ireland. As ever, if you’re going to be there, and would like to tell the world about it, you’re more than welcome to use these pages to do so. Meanwhile, in Maccarese, Bioversity International has a space on its website for discussion on how biodiversity can be used to fight hunger and malnutrition: have your say!

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Why organic tomatoes are good for you

I’ve been meaning to blog this for almost a month. R. Ford Denison (a name to reckon with) blogged about some of his own research that summarizes 10 years of research into the flavonoid content of tomatoes grown conventionally and organically. Bottom line is that the organic tomatoes contained almost double the flavonoids of conventionals. I’m not going to go into whether that’s a good thing or not. Instead, I’ll stress the point that Denison himself makes, about Darwinian agriculture.

Why do the organic tomatoes contain more flavonoids? Maybe because flavonoids play a part in combatting herbivory. And they are often produced in response to pest attacks, rather than all the time. So one reason that organic tomatoes contain more of these compounds — which are believed to be good for human health — is precisely because on an organic farm there are a few pests that attack the plants. No pests, no need for defense, no benefits for human health.

This is just one aspect of what Denison calls Darwinian agriculture, a fascinating approach to the whole question of just what is being selected. There is, as someone else wrote, grandeur in this view of life …