Considering humans as habitat reveals evidence of successional disease ecology among human pathogens.
PLoS Biol
; 20(9): e3001770, 2022 09.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36094962
ABSTRACT
The realization that ecological principles play an important role in infectious disease dynamics has led to a renaissance in epidemiological theory. Ideas from ecological succession theory have begun to inform an understanding of the relationship between the individual microbiome and health but have not yet been applied to investigate broader, population-level epidemiological dynamics. We consider human hosts as habitat and apply ideas from succession to immune memory and multi-pathogen dynamics in populations. We demonstrate that ecologically meaningful life history characteristics of pathogens and parasites, rather than epidemiological features alone, are likely to play a meaningful role in determining the age at which people have the greatest probability of being infected. Our results indicate the potential importance of microbiome succession in determining disease incidence and highlight the need to explore how pathogen life history traits and host ecology influence successional dynamics. We conclude by exploring some of the implications that inclusion of successional theory might have for understanding the ecology of diseases and their hosts.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Parasitos
/
Doenças Transmissíveis
/
Microbiota
/
Características de História de Vida
Limite:
Animals
/
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
PLoS Biol
Assunto da revista:
BIOLOGIA
Ano de publicação:
2022
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Estados Unidos