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WILD HEALTH
How does environmental biodiversity affect wildlife health?
We are experiencing a biodiversity crisis through the effects of human actions, such as habitat destruction, land conversion for agriculture and development, climate change, pollution and the spread of invasive species. This is a cause for concern as biodiversity has an essential role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Biodiversity is hypothesised to positively impact human health, for example via a co-association with the host’s microbiota - the associated community of microscopic organisms. However, it is unknown whether biodiversity confers a comparable benefit to wildlife.
WILD HEALTH will test the hypothesis that environmental biodiversity has positive effect on wildlife health. Through the consideration of different environmental scenarios in Alaska (US) and Scandinavia (Finland and Sweden), it examines whether:
• greater environmental biodiversity provides a more diverse microbial pool from which wildlife microbiota can develop,
• environmental biodiversity affects the diversity of diet and thus the composition of the host gut microbiota,
• microbiota diversity positively associates with improved health and fitness of wild mammals.