Book contents
- Wildlife Disease Ecology
- Ecological Reviews
- Wildlife Disease Ecology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface: Wildlife Disease Ecology
- Glossary of Terms
- Part I Understanding within-host processes
- Part II Understanding between-host processes
- Part III Understanding wildlife disease ecology at the community and landscape level
- Chapter Fifteen The ecological and evolutionary trajectory of oak powdery mildew in Europe
- Chapter Sixteen Healthy herds or predator spreaders? Insights from the plankton into how predators suppress and spread disease
- Chapter Seventeen Multi-trophic interactions and migration behaviour determine the ecology and evolution of parasite infection in monarch butterflies
- Chapter Eighteen When chytrid fungus invades: integrating theory and data to understand disease-induced amphibian declines
- Chapter Nineteen Ecology of a marine ectoparasite in farmed and wild salmon
- Chapter Twenty Mycoplasmal conjunctivitis in house finches: the study of an emerging disease
- Chapter Twenty-one Processes generating heterogeneities in infection and transmission in a parasite–rabbit system
- Chapter Twenty-two Sylvatic plague in Central Asia: a case study of abundance thresholds
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
- References
Chapter Twenty-two - Sylvatic plague in Central Asia: a case study of abundance thresholds
from Part III - Understanding wildlife disease ecology at the community and landscape level
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2019
- Wildlife Disease Ecology
- Ecological Reviews
- Wildlife Disease Ecology
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface: Wildlife Disease Ecology
- Glossary of Terms
- Part I Understanding within-host processes
- Part II Understanding between-host processes
- Part III Understanding wildlife disease ecology at the community and landscape level
- Chapter Fifteen The ecological and evolutionary trajectory of oak powdery mildew in Europe
- Chapter Sixteen Healthy herds or predator spreaders? Insights from the plankton into how predators suppress and spread disease
- Chapter Seventeen Multi-trophic interactions and migration behaviour determine the ecology and evolution of parasite infection in monarch butterflies
- Chapter Eighteen When chytrid fungus invades: integrating theory and data to understand disease-induced amphibian declines
- Chapter Nineteen Ecology of a marine ectoparasite in farmed and wild salmon
- Chapter Twenty Mycoplasmal conjunctivitis in house finches: the study of an emerging disease
- Chapter Twenty-one Processes generating heterogeneities in infection and transmission in a parasite–rabbit system
- Chapter Twenty-two Sylvatic plague in Central Asia: a case study of abundance thresholds
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
- References
Summary
Abundance thresholds are of fundamental importance in our attempts to understand the dynamics of wildlife infection. Identifying and manipulating these thresholds may also have substantial applied significance. The plague system in the Pre-Balkhash region of Kazakhstan has been extensively studied, including an unusually thorough investigation of the nature and importance of an abundance threshold for the infection. Great gerbils are the main reservoir host, with plague transmitted between them by a variety of flea species. Initial work identified such a threshold from time-series data, with great gerbil abundance being measured by level of occupancy (the proportion of the burrow systems in the landscape supporting an extended family group). However, this and other refinements of the threshold were better at predicting the absence of plague (below the threshold) than in guaranteeing its presence (above). Further analysis indicated that the threshold was a critical point in the percolation of plague across the landscape, rather than in a mass-action random mixing process. The performance of the threshold was also improved by incorporating both gerbil and flea abundance to generate a hyperbolic threshold curve.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Wildlife Disease EcologyLinking Theory to Data and Application, pp. 623 - 643Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
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