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Research Digest Synopses of Research Articles Ecology Drives the Global Distribution of Human Diseases It’s no surprise that the Amazonian rainforest contains far more species than, say, the Siberian tundra. Over 50% of the world’s species live in tropical rainforests, which cover just 6% to 7% of the earth’s terrestrial surface. That the number of marine and terrestrial species declines with distance from the equator is a well-documented phenomenon called the latitudinal species diversity gradient. What’s proven challenging, however, is fi guring out what drives this pattern. Over 30 hypotheses have been proposed in the past two decades, but only four have garnered serious attention. These four focus on variables relating to area and energy factors, geographic constraints, and habitat diversity. Understanding the factors—both contemporary and ancient—responsible for the diversity gradient could help answer one of the fundamental questions in evolutionary ecology: what regulates species diversity? But teasing out the likely mechanisms behind this diversity has practical implications as well: mounting evidence suggests that ecological and climatic The number of pathogen species increases towards the equator conditions infl uence the emergence, spread, and recurrence of infectious diseases. Global climate change is likely to aggravate confi rmed that, on average (seven times out of ten), tropical climate-sensitive diseases in unpredictable ways. areas harbor a larger number of pathogen species than more Increasingly, public health programs aimed at preventing and temperate areas. In other words, the species richness of human controlling disease outbreaks are considering aspects of the pathogens follows the same pattern seen in other species. ecology of infectious diseases—how hosts, vectors, and parasites These resul