Colin J. Carlson, Cole B. Brookson, Daniel J. Becker, Caroline A. Cummings, Rory Gibb, Fletcher W. Halliday, Alexis M. Heckley, Zheng Y. X. Huang, Torre Lavelle, Hailey Robertson, Amanda Vicente-Santos, Ciara M. Weets & Timothée Poisot 

Nature Reviews Biodiversity volume 1, pages 32–49 (2025)

Emerging infectious diseases, biodiversity loss, and anthropogenic environmental change are interconnected crises with massive social and ecological costs. In this Review, we discuss how pathogens and parasites are responding to global change, and the implications for pandemic prevention and biodiversity conservation. Ecological and evolutionary principles help to explain why both pandemics and wildlife die-offs are becoming more common; why land-use change and biodiversity loss are often followed by an increase in zoonotic and vector-borne diseases; and why some species, such as bats, host so many emerging pathogens. To prevent the next pandemic, scientists should focus on monitoring and limiting the spread of a handful of high-risk viruses, especially at key interfaces such as farms and live-animal markets. But to address the much broader set of infectious disease risks associated with the Anthropocene, decision-makers will need to develop comprehensive strategies that include pathogen surveillance across species and ecosystems; conservation-based interventions to reduce human–animal contact and protect wildlife health; health system strengthening; and global improvements in epidemic preparedness and response. Scientists can contribute to these efforts by filling global gaps in disease data, and by expanding the evidence base for disease–driver relationships and ecological interventions.

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M. A. Polo-González, A. P. Riascos, L. K. Eraso-Hernandez

In this paper, we introduce a mathematical framework to assess the impact of damage, defined as the reduction of weight in a specific link, on identical oscillator systems governed by the Kuramoto model and coupled through weighted networks. We analyze how weight modifications in a single link affect the system when its global function is to achieve the synchronization of coupled oscillators starting from random initial phases. We introduce different measures that allow the identification of cases where damage enhances synchronization (antifragile response), deteriorates it (fragile response), or has no significant impact. Using numerical solutions of the Kuramoto model, we investigate the effects of damage on network links where antifragility emerges. Our analysis includes lollipop graphs of varying sizes and a comprehensive evaluation and all the edges of 109 non-isomorphic graphs with six nodes. The approach is general and can be applied to study antifragility in other oscillator systems with different coupling mechanisms, offering a pathway for the quantitative exploration of antifragility in diverse complex systems.

Read the full article at: arxiv.org