New and pre-existing human infectious diseases have been emerging with increasing frequency in association with societal and ecological changes during the past several decades. This pattern of disease emergence is now appearing in wildlife, including marine vertebrates. Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) can, and have been explained in part as population level phenomena on the basis of ecological and evolutionary theory. Ecosystem-level processes associated with change at the level of ecological communities and in ecosystem functions increasingly are being used to explain EIDs, ranging from human-wildlife diseases in linked terrestrial-marine ecosystems to those of coral reefs. Fibropapilloma in sea turtles, a transmissible disease presumably caused by a novel herpesvirus, also exhibits a pattern of emergence suggestive of ecosystem-level influences. Biological systems are too complex, particularly when cross-scale processes from the cellular to ecosystem level are involved, to render the EID phenomenon explicable via conventional reductionistic, disciplinary approaches. Application of complexity theory employed with a social-ecological systems model offers some ‘surprising’ insights into the EIDs, which can be viewed as corresponding to emerging properties such as resilience, often equated with ecosystem health.
Presenter:
Bruce A. Wilcox, Ph.D.
Professor/Chair, Division of Ecology and Health
John A. Burns School of Medicine
University of Hawaii, Manoa
Wednesday, September 1, 2004
11:00 a.m.
Pacific Ocean Science & Technology Building, 723
The Pacific Research Center for Marine Biomedicine (PRCMB) is a newly established center at the University of Hawaii dedicated to trans-disciplinary research designed to gain new knowledge about the profound impacts of the ocean on human health. The Center is funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
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