Many infectious diseases of recent concern, including malaria, cholera, plague, and Lyme disease, have emerged from complex ecological communities, involving multiple hosts and their associated parasites.
Several of these diseases appear to be influenced by human impacts on the environment, such as intensive agriculture, clear-cut forestry, and habitat loss and fragmentation; such environmental impacts may affect many species that occur at trophic levels below or above the host community.
These observations suggest that the prevalence of both human and wildlife diseases may be altered in unanticipated ways by changes in the structure and composition of ecological communities. Predicting the epidemiological ramifications of such alteration in community composition will require strengthening the current union between community ecology and epidemiology.
Disease Ecology highlights exciting advances in theoretical and empirical research towards understanding the importance of community structure in the emergence of infectious diseases.
To date, research on host-parasite systems has tended to explore a limited set of community interactions, such as a community of host species infected by a single parasite species, or a community of parasites infecting a single host.
Less effort has been devoted to addressing additional complications, such as multiple-host-multiple-parasite systems, sequential hosts acting on different trophic levels, alternate hosts with spatially varying interactions, effects arising from trophic levels other than those of hosts and parasites, or stochastic effects resulting from small population size in at least one alternate host species. The chapters in this book illustrate aspects of community ecology that influence pathogen transmission rates and disease dynamics in a wide variety of study systems.
The innovative studies presented in Disease Ecology communicate a clear message: studies of epidemiology can be approached from the perspective of community ecology, and students of community ecology can contribute significantly to epidemiology.
1: Sharon K. Collinge and Chris Ray: Community Epidemiology 2: Robert D. Holt and Andrew P. Dobson: Extending the principles of community ecology to address the epidemiology of host-pathogen systems 3: Richard S. Ostfeld, Felicia Keesing, and Kathleen LoGiudice: Community ecology meets epidemiology: the case of Lyme disease 4: Keith Clay, Clay Fuqua, Curt Lively and Michael J. Wade: Microbial community ecology of tick-borne human pathogens 5: Charles E. Mitchell and Alison G. Power: Disease dynamics in plant communities 6: Robert S. Unnasch, Eddie W. Cupp and Thomas R. Unnasch: Host selection and its role in transmission of arboviral encephalitides 7: Eliska Rejmánková , John Grieco, Nicole Achee, Penny Masuoka, Kevin Pope, Donald Roberts, and Richard M.Higashi: Freshwater community interactions and malaria 8: Kathryn L. Cottingham and Julia M. Butzler: The community ecology of Vibrio cholerae 9: Kevin D. Lafferty, Ryan F. Hechinger, Jenny Shaw, Kathleen Whitney, and Armand M. Kuris: Food webs and parasites in a salt marsh ecosystem 10: Mary F. Poteet: Shifting roles of abiotic and biotic regulation of a multi-host parasite following disturbance 11: David K. Skelly, Susan R. Bolden, Manja P. Holland, L. Kealoha Freidenburg, Nicole A. Freidenfelds, and Trent R. Malcolm: Urbanization and disease in amphibians 12: Leslie A. Real and James E. Childs: Spatial-temporal dynamics of rabies in ecological communities 13: Peter Daszak, R. Plowright, J. H. Epstein, J. Pulliam, S. Abdul Rahman, H. E. Field, A. Jamalludin, M. Y. Johara, C. S. Smith, K. J. Olival, S. Luby, K. Halpin, A. D. Hyatt, A. A. Cunningham, and the Henipavirus Ecology Research Group (HERG): The emergence of Nipah and Hendra virus: pathogen dynamics across a wildlife-livestock-human continuum 14: Chris Ray and Sharon K. Collinge: Potential effects of a keystone species on the dynamics of sylvatic plague
Dr Sharon K. Collinge's research is based primarily in grassland ecosystems of the American west, integrating theories and methods of ecology and conservation to examine how changing landscapes affect interactions among native species. Her research centres on how habitat loss and fragmentation influence species interactions, particularly those involving disease dynamics in grassland mammals. Dr Collinge received her PhD from Harvard University in landscape ecology in 1995 and has been on the faculty of the University of Colorado-Boulder since 1998. Dr Chris Ray studies the demographic and genetic dynamics of spatially structured populations. Her research includes the development and application of predictive models, and the use of long-term field studies to test theory in population biology. Dr Ray received her PhD from the University of California-Davis in population biology in 1997, has worked on threatened and endangered species management projects for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and has been a research associate at the University of Colorado-Boulder since 2001.
Reviews for Disease Ecology: Community structure and pathogen dynamics
This book is a timely statement of the areas of disease ecology where most progress is likely to be made in future. Keith Day and Brian Rushton, THES 'For those less familiar with infectious diseases the book provides fascinating insights into their ecological context..we would recommend it to any ecology student.' Keith Day and Brian Rushton The Times Higher Education Supplement 'This book should be invaluable for advanced undergraduate teaching, and gives a fresh range of subjects to choose from.' Des Thompson, Bulletin of the British Ecological Society 37:3
