A new study warns that outbreaks and many infectious diseases such as Ebola and the West Nile virus are expected to spread and become full blown epidemics across the world due to climate change.

Researchers said climate change can cause a dramatic shift in habitats and force wildlife, crops, livestock and even humans to be exposed to deadly pathogens that they've never encountered before.

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They consider this a fundamental conceptual shift where pathogens can retain genetic abilities that will allow them to transfer to new hosts quickly. This is because new hosts are more susceptible to infection and suffer more since they haven't developed any kind of resistance. Without any type of resistance in the system, pathogens quickly evolve into chronic disease.

According to Daniel Brooks from the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska, this doesn't mean the emergence of an Andromeda Strain will wipe out all humans. There will, however, be more localized outbreaks events that will put more pressure and strain efforts of medical and health systems globally.

Brooks and his co-author, Eric Hoberg, a zoologist from the U.S. National Parasite Collection of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, observed how climate change immensely affected diverse ecosystems that can lead to this epidemic scenario.

Scientists have long believed parasites don't quickly transfer from one host to another species since they rely on each other to evolve. New diseases that could plague humanity can be caused by these parasites that can quickly learn to live in a new host. This is called the parasite paradox.

These pathogens are now highly adaptive and have the ability to shift into new versions of themselves in other hosts, even if that species is not indigenous to that area.

Brooks said that when humans hunted capuchin and spider monkeys in Costa Rica, the monkeys' parasites quickly transferred to howler monkeys. Lungworms have been also known to transfer from caribou to musk oxen in the Canadian Arctic region.

Researchers not only advise developing vaccines the counter the emergence of new diseases but pinpoint the carriers and primary sources of these pathogens and parasites.

This study was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Tagsglobal warming, epidemics, infectious diseases, climate change cause more infectious diseases, Climate Change is Increasing More Epidemics and Infectious Diseases Everywhere