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COMMUNITY LEVEL ANALYSIS OF VECTOR-BORNE DISEASE
Citation:
OrmeZavaleta, J AND P. A. Rossignol. COMMUNITY LEVEL ANALYSIS OF VECTOR-BORNE DISEASE. TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AND HYGIENE. Elsevier Ireland Limited, Limerick, Ireland, 98:610-618, (2004).
Description:
Ecological community structure is particularly important in vector-borne zoonotic diseases with complex life cycles. Single population models, such as the so-called Ross-Macdonald model (Baily, 1982), have been important in developing and characterizing our current understanding of human vector-borne disease. However, these models often by-pass or minimize community-level interactions. Qualitative community model analysis (Puccia and Levins, 1991) may provide a meaningful alternative to modeling vector-borne disease. We built on recent mathematical developments in qualitative community modeling (Dambacher et al., 2002a; 2003a, b) coupled with conventional biomathematical models of vector-borne disease transmission, to provide a procedure to analyze risk. Using this procedure, we can hypothesize change in risk of vector-borne disease from press perturbations, such as control measures, habitat alteration or global warning. We demonstrate the application of this procedure to an oak forest community to predict the risk of Lyme disease. Our predictions of the community dynamics of Lyme disease, validating reports of positive associations between deer abundance and risk of disease, are consistent with observations in the literature.