Abstract
The epidemiological dynamics of potentially free-living pathogens are often studied with respect to a specific pathogen species (e.g., cholera) and most studies concentrate only on host-pathogen interactions. Here we show that metacommunity-level interactions can alter conventional spatial disease dynamics. We introduce a pathogen eating consumer species and investigate a deterministic epidemiological model of two habitat patches, where both patches can be occupied by hosts, pathogens, and consumers of free-living pathogens. An isolated habitat patch shows periodic disease outbreaks in the host population, arising from cyclic consumer-pathogen dynamics. On the other hand, consumer dispersal between the patches generate asymmetric disease prevalence, such that the host population in one patch stays disease-free, while disease outbreaks occur in the other patch. Such asymmetry can also arise with host dispersal, where infected hosts carry pathogens to the other patch. This indirect movement of pathogens causes also a counter-intuitive effect: decreasing morbidity in a focal patch under increasing pathogen immigration. Our results underline that community-level interactions influence disease dynamics and consistent spatial asymmetry can arise also in spatially homogeneous systems.
Highlights
While epidemiological theory tends to concentrate on obligate pathogens transmitted from host to host, many pathogens are opportunistically infecting hosts from the environment
We investigate the spatio-temporal metacommunity dynamics of an environmental opportunistic pathogen in a simple two-patch system, where pathogens are subject to predation in both habitat patches
We found that in a spatial host-pathogen-consumer system, consumer and host dispersals can lead to an emergent asymmetry in disease prevalence between patches, as well as more complex local population dynamics
Summary
The epidemiological dynamics of potentially free-living pathogens are often studied with respect to a specific pathogen species (e.g., cholera) and most studies concentrate only on host-pathogen interactions. An isolated habitat patch shows periodic disease outbreaks in the host population, arising from cyclic consumer-pathogen dynamics. Consumer dispersal between the patches generate asymmetric disease prevalence, such that the host population in one patch stays disease-free, while disease outbreaks occur in the other patch Such asymmetry can arise with host dispersal, where infected hosts carry pathogens to the other patch. Earlier theoretical studies on environmental pathogens have mainly concentrated on local dynamics in a single habitat patch. These studies have demonstrated how outside-host competition can affect disease outbreaks and pathogen invasion ability[16, 17], and how the predation of pathogens[8] or their vectors[18] change disease dynamics. Our main hypothesis is that community structure coupled with dispersal will change conventional disease dynamics
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