Jonathan Davies

The COVID-19 pandemic came as a shock to most people, apart from researchers studying multi-host pathogens, who had been predicting increasing likelihood of zoonotic disease (diseases shared between people and wildlife) emergence for decades. Similar trends for increasing disease and pest outbreaks have been documented in wildlife and plants. As a Wall Scholar, Prof. Davies will address how anthropogenic global change will reshape the infectious disease landscape, and whether shifts in the composition of natural communities might tip biodiversity from being a buffer to disease emergence – the dilution effect – to being an aggravating factor – the amplification effect. Prof. Davies will work towards a first-principles model of disease emergence in multi-host pathogens. He will challenge this model with empirical data, and use statistical tools to identify the ecological drivers of emergence. Using projections of species extinctions and range shifts under global climate models, he will explore changes in the infectious disease landscape, and whether we are approaching a tipping point in the relationship between biodiversity and disease emergence.
This work aims to provide a new synthesis on biodiversity and infectious disease that builds upon first principle models, and that can be projected to explore future global change scenarios. Prof. Davies hopes that this work will inform debate on the benefits of biodiversity to people, and help to identify win-win solutions that enhance the protection of biodiversity and reduce the global disease burden.