Modelling study is first to project how global warming will increase virus swapping between species.
Bats will have a large contribution to virus transmission between species in the future, a modelling study finds.Over the next 50 years, climate change could drive more than 15,000 new cases of mammals transmitting viruses to other mammals, according to a study published in.
“This work provides us with more incontrovertible evidence that the coming decades will not only be hotter, but sicker,” says Gregory Albery, a disease ecologist at Georgetown University in Washington DC and a co-author of the study.To make their predictions, Albery and his colleagues developed and tested models, and ran simulations over a five-year period.
One assumption the researchers had to make was about how far and wide species would spread as the climate changes. But factors such as whether mammals can adapt to local conditions or physically cross barriers in landscapes are difficult to predict. But the researchers urge that there is no time to waste. Earth has already warmed by more than 1 °C above pre-industrial temperatures, and this is driving species migration and disease swapping. “It’s happening and it’s not preventable, even in the best climate-change scenarios,” Albery says.
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