SPATIAL-ANALYSIS OF VECTOR-BORNE DISEASE - A 4-SPECIES MODEL

Disease can influence a host population's dynamics directly or indirectly through effects on the host's interactions with competitors and exploiters. We present a stochastic, spatially explicit model for the epidemiological landscape of a vector-borne disease. Two host species, of unequal competitive strength, are attacked by a selective parasite; the parasite serves as a vector for a pathogen. We emphasize the importance of the ecological stencil, i.e. the local area where ecological interactions govern a site's species composition. We demonstrate analytically that varying the size of the ecological stencil critically affects the dynamics of the host densities and the potential equilibrium configuration of the system. We point out how parallel computing can efficiently employ the geometry of the stencil's local transitions to predict large-scale spatio-temporal patterns of the model community.