Fig. 5.

Results of constraining biodiversity–disease relationships to pass through the origin. The top two rows show Pearson’s skewness for unconstrained curves, and curves that were constrained to pass through the origin, with each study connected by a solid line. Left-skewed relationships (Pearson’s skewness < 0.25) are shown in red, right-skewed relationships (Pearson’s skewness > 0.25) are shown in blue, and non-skewed relationships are shown in gray. The bottom row shows the model-estimated effect of constraining the curves to pass through the origin, with the point indicating the model-estimated mean, and error bars showing the 95% confidence interval. On average, constraining curves to pass through the origin results in a more left-skewed relationship between biodiversity and disease. Source data are provided as a Source Data file