Integrating social behaviour, demography and disease dynamics in network models: applications to disease management in declining wildlife populations

Abstract

The emergence and spread of infections can contribute to the decline and extinction of populations, particularly in conjunction with anthropogenic environmental change. The importance of heterogeneity in processes of transmission, resistance and tolerance is increasingly well understood in theory, but empirical studies that consider both the demographic and behavioural implications of infection are scarce. Non-random mixing of host individuals can impact the demographic thresholds that determine the amplification or attenuation of disease prevalence. Risk assessment and management of disease in threatened wildlife populations must therefore consider not just host density, but also the social structure of host populations. Here we integrate the most recent developments in epidemiological research from a demographic and social network perspective, and synthesize the latest developments in social network modelling for wildlife disease, to explore their applications to disease management in populations in decline and at risk of extinction. We use simulated examples to support our key points and reveal how disease-management strategies can and should exploit both behavioural and demographic information to prevent or control the spread of disease. Our synthesis highlights the importance of considering the combined impacts of demographic and behavioural processes in epidemics to successful disease management in a conservation context. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Linking behaviour to dynamics of populations and communities: application of novel approaches in behavioural ecology to conservation’.

Predicting the global mammalian viral sharing network using phylogeography

“…Future investigations could extend our framework to simulate the dynamic co-speciation of mammals and their viruses in order to account for these processes and/or to explicitly investigate how viral sharing connectivity and viral diversity are correlated across mammal species. Our model may also prove useful for building and parameterising much-needed multi-host network models for conservation purposes, particularly where there is scarce prior information on interspecific pathogen sharing 37,39 .…”

Predicting the global mammalian viral sharing network using phylogeography

“…Future investigations may extend our framework to simulate the dynamic cospeciation of mammals and their viruses in order to account for these processes and/or to explicitly investigate how viral sharing connectivity and viral diversity are correlated across mammal species. Our model may also prove useful for building and parameterising muchneeded multi-host network models for conservation purposes, particularly where there is scarce prior information on interspecific pathogen sharing 34,36 .…”

Multiple spatial behaviours govern social network positions in a wild ungulate

“…Several frameworks have been proposed to facilitate the untangling of spatial and social 49 processes in wild animals (Jacoby & Freeman 2016;Silk et al 2018Silk et al , 2019Webber & 50 Vander Wal 2018; Mourier et al 2019). To date, associated statistical methodology focusses 51 on incorporating spatial activity into the node-and-edge structure of network data, including 52 e.g.…”