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species barrier (plural species barriers)
- (pathology, zoology) The inability of a disease to be transmitted from one species to a different one.
2003 June 3, Sandra Blakeslee, “Mad Cows, Sane Cats: Making Sense of the 'Species Barrier'”, in The New York Times[1], →ISSN:The people had died because they ate meat from infected cows. A species barrier had crumbled.
2004, W. Michael Scheld et al., editors, Infections of the Central Nervous System, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, →ISBN, page 261:The species barrier often is not an absolute barrier and refers to the difficulties in the transfer from one species to the next.
inability of a disease to be transmitted