Preliminary Investigation of Schmalhausen's Law in a Directly Transmitted Pathogen Outbreak System

The past few decades have been marked by drastic modifications to the landscape by anthropogenic processes, leading to increased variability in the environment. For populations that thrive at their distributional boundaries, these changes can affect them drastically, as Schmalhausen's law predicts that their dynamics are more likely to be susceptible to environmental variation. Recently, this evolutionary theory has been put to the test in vector-borne disease emergences systems, and has been demonstrated effective in predicting emergence patterns. However, it has yet to be tested in a directly transmitted pathogen. Here, we provide a preliminary test of Schmalhausen's law using data on Marburg virus outbreaks originating from spillover events. By combining the two important aspects of Schmalhausen's law, namely climatic anomalies and distance to species distributional edges, we show that Marburgvirus outbreaks may support an aspect of this evolutionary theory, with distance to species distributional edge having a weak influence on outbreak size. However, we failed to demonstrate any effect of climatic anomalies on Marburgvirus outbreaks, arguably related to the lack of importance of these variables in directly transmitted pathogen outbreaks. With increasing zoonotic spillover events occurring from wild species, we highlight the importance of considering ecological variability to better predict emergence patterns.

Automated summary

The past few decades have seen significant changes to the environment due to human activities, resulting in increased environmental variability. This can have a drastic impact on species populations at their distributional boundaries, as predicted by Schmalhausen's law. Recent studies have tested this evolutionary theory in vector-borne disease emergence systems and found it effective in predicting emergence patterns. However, it has not been directly tested in transmission of pathogens. This study provides a preliminary test of Schmalhausen's law using data on Marburg virus outbreaks, and suggests that distance to species distributional edge may influence outbreak size, while climatic anomalies may not play a significant role in directly transmitted pathogen outbreaks. Future research should consider ecological variability to improve prediction of emergence patterns.