Science
4 September 2015 vol 349, issue 6252, pages 1021-1136
http://www.sciencemag.org/current.dtl

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Food Security
Global agricultural research network is overhauled again
Dennis Normile
A key guardian of global food security is looking shaky. Funding for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the world’s premier group of agricultural research centers, is sagging in the global economic downturn. Its flagship backer—the World Bank—threatened to pull the plug on its contributions. And now CGIAR is about to undergo internal convulsions: It’s reorganizing for the second time in just 5 years. Backers say the move will give CGIAR a more coherent strategy and make the most of available funding. Critics argue that greater effort should go into securing stable funding and prioritizing research.

Policy Forum
Sustainability
Sustainable development agenda: 2030
William Colglazier
Author Affiliations
Visiting Scientist and Senior Scholar, Center for Science Diplomacy, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC 20005, USA.
On 25 to 27 September, United Nations member states will formally adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as key elements of the post-2015 development agenda (1), successors to the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that focused attention from 2000 to 2015. The final 2030 agenda text for adoption proposes 17 SDGs with 169 targets, to be supplemented in 2016 with numerous indicators. All of the text emphasizing science, technology, and innovation (STI) is most welcome but achieving desired outcomes by 2030 will require deep understanding of how to maximize the contributions of STI. Having had the privilege of addressing this topic to the UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) that will oversee the SDG effort, I discuss areas that I believe are essential to success. I focus on three issues: (i) using the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR) process to bridge SDGs and scientific communities, (ii) choosing targets, indicators, and roadmaps related to STI, and (iii) the imperative of building knowledge-based societies.

Review
Why infectious disease research needs community ecology
Pieter T. J. Johnson1,*, Jacobus C. de Roode2, Andy Fenton3
Author Affiliations
1Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
2Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
3Institute of Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZB, UK.
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Despite ongoing advances in biomedicine, infectious diseases remain a major threat to human health, economic sustainability, and wildlife conservation. This is in part a result of the challenges of controlling widespread or persistent infections that involve multiple hosts, vectors, and parasite species. Moreover, many contemporary disease threats involve interactions that manifest across nested scales of biological organization, from disease progression at the within-host level to emergence and spread at the regional level. For many such infections, complete eradication is unlikely to be successful, but a broader understanding of the community in which host-parasite interactions are embedded will facilitate more effective management. Recent advances in community ecology, including findings from traits-based approaches and metacommunity theory, offer the tools and concepts to address the complexities arising from multispecies, multiscale disease threats.
ADVANCES
Community ecology aims to identify the factors that govern the structure, assembly, and dynamics of ecological communities. We describe how analytical and conceptual approaches from this discipline can be used to address fundamental challenges in disease research, such as (i) managing the ecological complexity of multihost-multiparasite assemblages; (ii) identifying the drivers of heterogeneities among individuals, species, and regions; and (iii) quantifying how processes link across multiple scales of biological organization to drive disease dynamics. We show how a community ecology framework can help to determine whether infection is best controlled through “defensive” approaches that reduce host suitability or through “offensive” approaches that dampen parasite spread. Examples of defensive approaches are the strategic use of wildlife diversity to reduce host and vector transmission, and taking advantage of antagonism between symbionts to suppress within-host growth and pathology. Offensive approaches include the targeted control of superspreading hosts and the reduction of human-wildlife contact rates to mitigate spillover. By identifying the importance of parasite dispersal and establishment, a community ecology framework can offer additional insights about the scale at which disease should be controlled.
OUTLOOK
Ongoing technological advances are rapidly overcoming previous barriers in data quality and quantity for complex, multispecies systems. The emerging synthesis of “disease community ecology” offers the tools and concepts necessary to interpret these data and use that understanding to inform the development of more effective disease control strategies in humans and wildlife. Looking forward, we emphasize the increasing importance of tight integration among surveillance, community ecology analyses, and public health implementation. Building from the rich legacy of whole-system manipulations in community ecology, we further highlight the value of large-scale experiments for understanding host-pathogen interactions and designing effective control measures. Through this blending of data, theory, and analytical approaches, we can understand how interactions between parasites within hosts, hosts within populations, and host species within ecological communities combine to drive disease dynamics, thereby providing new ways to manage emerging infections.