High species diversity is believed to reduce the spread of disease because some species are more susceptible to the disease than others. But what if it’s a disease that all the species get? And what if the species are plants?
A study published in the current issue of Ecology Letters found that the principle of disease dissolution still applied. The disease spread more slowly in more species-rich forests, perhaps because the different species, while all susceptible, had different levels of susceptibility and transmitted the disease at different rates.
Read a little blurb about the research from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, here.