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Incubator or barrier? Exploring the links between agriculture, biodiversity and the spread of pathogens
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Many pathogens, including the virus that causes COVID-19, are thought to have originated in wild animals before spilling into human populations.
Agriculture is often blamed for accelerating this process, which is known as zoonotic spillover, through deforestation and habitat fragmentation that reduce biodiversity and increase the likelihood of contact between infected wildlife and humans.
But in a Perspectives article published online Sept. 15 in the journal One Earth, University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability ecologist Ivette Perfecto and her colleagues argue that agriculture can both help and hinder: It can act as an incubator of novel animal-borne microbes, facilitating their evolution into human-ready pathogens, or it can form barriers that help block their spread.