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Dynamics of a multihost pathogen in a carnivore community
Author(s) -
Craft M. E.,
Hawthorne P. L.,
Packer C.,
Dobson A. P.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of animal ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.134
H-Index - 157
eISSN - 1365-2656
pISSN - 0021-8790
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2008.01410.x
Subject(s) - intraspecific competition , carnivore , biology , sympatric speciation , interspecific competition , transmission (telecommunications) , ecology , outbreak , range (aeronautics) , population , wildlife disease , disease transmission , canine distemper , zoology , sympatry , geography , virus , predation , demography , virology , wildlife , materials science , composite material , sociology , electrical engineering , engineering
Summary1 We provide the first theoretical analysis of multihost disease dynamics to incorporate social behaviour and contrasting rates of within‐ and between‐group disease transmission. 2 A stochastic susceptible–infected–recovered (SIR) model of disease transmission involving one to three sympatric species was built to mimic the 1994 Serengeti canine distemper virus outbreak, which infected a variety of carnivores with widely ranging social structures. The model successfully mimicked the erratic and discontinuous spatial pattern of lion deaths observed in the Serengeti lions under a reasonable range of parameter values, but only when one to two other species repeatedly transmitted the virus to the lion population. 3 The outputs from our model suggest several principles that will apply to most directly transmitted multihost pathogens: (i) differences in social structure can significantly influence the size, velocity and spatial pattern of a multihost epidemic; and (ii) social structures that permit higher intraspecific neighbour‐to‐neighbour transmission are the most likely to transmit disease to other species; whereas (iii) species with low neighbour‐to‐neighbour intraspecific transmission suffer the greatest costs from interspecific transmission.