PARENT SESSION
Symposium 3: Emerging Diseases: Stressing the Union of Community Ecology and Epidemiology
Organized by: S Collinge and C Ray
Monday, August 4. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM, SITCC Chatham Ballroom C.

Infectious Diseases in Multi-Host Systems.

Dobson, Andrew¹, ¹ Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

ABSTRACT- Most emerging diseases are ones that have transferred between host species. Most important in this respect are pathogens that move between wild hosts and domestic hosts, or from domestic (and wild) hosts to humans. Understanding the ecology of these diseases requires us to develop a framework in which to examine the dynamics of pathogens that infect two or more host species. In this talk I will describe and illustrate some mathematical models that allow us to explore this problem. I will then provide examples from pathogens of carnivores in the Serengeti and of birds in Hawaii that illustrate some of the patterns predicted by the models.

Key words: multiple hosts, HAwaii, disease ecology, Serengeti