Spatial organisation plasticity reduces disease infection risk in rock–paper–scissors models

Mobility restrictions in response to local epidemic outbreaks in rock-paper-scissors models

“…It has been shown that the mobility limitation tactic reduces the organisms' disease contamination risk in the spatial rock-paper-scissors model [40]. This changes the spatial patterns, with organisms of the same species occupying regions whose characteristic length scale varies with disease infection and mortality rates.…”

“…This changes the spatial patterns, with organisms of the same species occupying regions whose characteristic length scale varies with disease infection and mortality rates. However, the model addressed in [40] focused on a globally designed dispersal limitation, equally imposed on all organisms, independent of the existence of a disease outbreak affecting the organisms' neighbourhood. This means that, although unveiling essential details of the complexity of disease transmission mitigation achieved by a global mobility restriction rule, the model does not consider the heterogeneity of the spatial distribution of infected organisms, causing local disease outbreaks with distinct intensities.…”

“…In this work, instead of assuming a fixed global strategy for all organisms in the system, as in [40], we study a mobility restriction response triggered autonomously by each individual of one out the species whenever perceiving a disease outbreak in its vicinity. Therefore, if a given organism is not imminent to be contaminated, it continues moving with maximum mobility, advancing on the lattice to conquer territory, allowing population growth [6].…”

“…We simulate the stochastic version of the rock-paper-scissors model using the May-Leonard implementation, where the total number of individuals is not conserved [41][42][43][44][45][46]. Our epidemic model considers that infected organisms act as viral vectors, with no healthy individual becoming immune when cured of the disease [40,[47][48][49][50][51][52][53]. Because of the unevenness in the cyclic game introduced by the ability of organisms of one out of the species to perform the behavioural self-preservation strategy, the species dominance depends on the local intensities of the epidemic surges inducing individuals to decelerate [54][55][56][57][58].…”

Adaptive survival movement strategy to local epidemic outbreaks in cyclic models

“…There is plenty of evidence that self-preservation behavioural strategies play a central role in controlling natural resources. Therefore, prioritising moving toward the direction where the probability of being killed is minimum has been demonstrated to be more advantageous in cyclic game models [22][23][24][25][26]. It has been shown in [22] that the safeguard strategy is advantageous for species participating in a cyclic spatial game, giving the species the possession of the most significant fraction of the territory.…”