Abstract
Good understanding of individual animal movement is needed in the context of epidemiology in order to predict the rate of spread of infectious diseases. It is also required for problems arising in nature conservation, biological invasion, pest monitoring, etc. A question that often appears in the centre of the movement studies is which movement pattern is `faster' or more efficient. For instance, it is widely believed that the pattern quantified by a power law distribution of movement steps is faster than the Brownian motion. Here we show that the answer to this question may be not so straightforward and depends on the way how different step length distributions are compared.
Highlights
Recent decades have seen outbreaks of several dangerous infectious diseases across the world such as Swine influenza [1,2], Ebola fever [3], dengue fever [4,5], Zika fever [6] and others
Once a disease outbreak occurs, one immediate task is to localize it in space, i.e. to block its spatial spread or, in case blocking is not possible, at least to predict the direction and rate of the spread
There is a need for a good understanding of the factors controlling the rate of disease spatial spread, which is a timely problem of high practical importance
Summary
Recent decades have seen outbreaks of several dangerous infectious diseases across the world such as Swine influenza [1,2], Ebola fever [3], dengue fever [4,5], Zika fever [6] and others. Once a disease outbreak occurs, one immediate task is to localize it in space, i.e. to block its spatial spread or, in case blocking is not possible, at least to predict the direction and rate of the spread. The latter is important as it provides an estimate of the time that is available to local authorities and medical units to mobilize their resources. There is a need for a good understanding of the factors controlling the rate of disease spatial spread, which is a timely problem of high practical importance.
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