Loading...
Modeling the Effects of Seasonal Births and Predation on Disease Spread
Introne, Ally
Introne, Ally
Abstract
For many organisms, births occur in seasonal pulses, which can affect how infection persists within a population. Population changes throughout the year can also change the per capita predation rates, which in turn can affect disease dynamics. The use of pulsed birth rates in addition to more accurate predation functions increases the realism of models, which is crucial for preventing or controlling major disease outbreaks. This research uses a Susceptible-Infected (SI) model to study the effects of seasonal births and predation on the spread of infection in a population over time. We consider models with constant and pulsed births as well as linear and hyperbolic predation functions. We calculate the basic reproductive number to determine the conditions under which infection fades out or spreads and use numerical simulations to examine system behavior when infection is able to persist. We find that when predation depends linearly on prey populations, the timing of births does not affect average infection or disease transmissibility. However, this is not the case for systems with hyperbolic predation. Additionally, we observe that hyperbolic predation is more conducive to successful infection invasion in a population compared to linear predation.
Description
Date
2023-05-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Collections
Download Dataset
Rights Holder
Usage License
Embargo
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
Citation
Advisor
Shaw, Leah
Shi, Junping
Shields, Jeffrey
Shi, Junping
Shields, Jeffrey
Department
Mathematics