Rohani Pejman, Keeling Matthew J, Grenfell Bryan T
Institute of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2202, USA.
Am Nat. 2002 May;159(5):469-81. doi: 10.1086/339467.
An important issue in the history of ecology has been the study of the relative importance of deterministic forces and processes noise in shaping the dynamics of ecological populations. We address this question by exploring the temporal dynamics of two childhood infections, measles and whooping cough, in England and Wales. We demonstrate that epidemics of whooping cough are strongly influenced by stochasticity; fully deterministic approaches cannot achieve even a qualitative fit to the observed data. In contrast, measles dynamics are extremely well explained by a deterministic model. These differences are shown to be caused by their contrasting responses to dynamical noise due to different infectious periods.
生态学史上的一个重要问题是研究确定性力量和过程噪声在塑造生态种群动态方面的相对重要性。我们通过探究英格兰和威尔士两种儿童传染病——麻疹和百日咳的时间动态来解决这个问题。我们证明，百日咳的流行受到随机性的强烈影响；完全确定性的方法甚至无法对观测数据进行定性拟合。相比之下，麻疹动态可以用确定性模型很好地解释。这些差异表明是由它们因不同感染期而对动态噪声的不同反应所导致的。
