• The role of open lung biopsy in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome needs to be investigated in prospective, randomized and controlled clinical trials. Association and Host Selectivity in Multi-Host Pathogens The distribution of multi-host pathogens over their host range conditions their population dynamics and structure. Also, host co-infection by different pathogens may have important consequences for the evolution of hosts and pathogens, and host-pathogen co-evolution. Hence it is of interest to know if the distribution of pathogens over their host range is random, or if there are associations between hosts and pathogens, or between pathogens sharing a host. To analyse these issues we propose indices for the observed patterns of host infection by pathogens, and for the observed patterns of co-infection, and tests to analyse if these patterns conform to randomness or reflect associations. Applying these tests to the prevalence of five plant viruses on 21 wild plant species evidenced host-virus associations: most hosts and viruses were selective for viruses and hosts, respectively. Interestingly, the more host-selective viruses were the more prevalent ones, suggesting that host specialisation is a successful strategy for multi-host pathogens. Analyses also showed that viruses tended to associate positively in co-infected hosts. The developed indices and tests provide the tools to analyse how strong and common are these associations among different groups of pathogens, which will help to understand and model the population biology of multi-host pathogens. Pathogens have highly variable host ranges: in natural conditions some infect only one or a few related species (i.e., specialist pathogens) while other can infect a wide range of hosts belonging to different taxonomic groups (i.e., multi-host or generalist pathogens). A large fraction of described pathogens of humans, animals and plants are generalists [1] [2] [3] . The ability to infect different hosts conditions the epidemiology and pathogenicity of generalist pathogens and, therefore, is highly relevant for pathogen management and disease control [1, 4] . The distribution of multihost pathogens over their host range, i.e. the frequency of infection in the various host species within an ecosystem, may vary largely, which could determine the population dynamics and structure of the pathogen. The distribution of a pathogen species over its host range may also determine important aspects of its biology in hosts significant from an anthropocentric viewpoint (i.e. target hosts), such as reservoirs and inoculum sources, emergence and reemergence, population thresholds for disease invasion or critical community size for disease persistence [e.g., 1, [4] [5] [6] [7] .