Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, USA.
Ecol Lett. 2015 Apr;18(4):401-15. doi: 10.1111/ele.12418. Epub 2015 Mar 2.
Disease and community ecology share conceptual and theoretical lineages, and there has been a resurgence of interest in strengthening links between these fields. Building on recent syntheses focused on the effects of host community composition on single pathogen systems, we examine pathogen (microparasite) communities using a stochastic metacommunity model as a starting point to bridge community and disease ecology perspectives. Such models incorporate the effects of core community processes, such as ecological drift, selection and dispersal, but have not been extended to incorporate host-pathogen interactions, such as immunosuppression or synergistic mortality, that are central to disease ecology. We use a two-pathogen susceptible-infected (SI) model to fill these gaps in the metacommunity approach; however, SI models can be intractable for examining species-diverse, spatially structured systems. By placing disease into a framework developed for community ecology, our synthesis highlights areas ripe for progress, including a theoretical framework that incorporates host dynamics, spatial structuring and evolutionary processes, as well as the data needed to test the predictions of such a model. Our synthesis points the way for this framework and demonstrates that a deeper understanding of pathogen community dynamics will emerge from approaches working at the interface of disease and community ecology.
疾病与群落生态学具有共同的概念和理论渊源，并且人们对加强这两个领域之间的联系重新产生了兴趣。本研究以关注宿主群落组成对单一病原体系统影响的综合研究为基础，利用随机集合群落模型作为起点，来连接群落和疾病生态学的观点，来研究病原体（微生物寄生虫）群落。这些模型纳入了核心群落过程的影响，例如生态漂移、选择和扩散，但尚未扩展到纳入宿主-病原体相互作用，如免疫抑制或协同致死作用，这些作用是疾病生态学的核心。我们使用双病原体易感性感染（SI）模型来填补集合群落方法中的这些空白；然而，对于检查具有多种物种且具有空间结构的系统，SI 模型可能难以处理。通过将疾病置于为群落生态学开发的框架中，我们的综合研究强调了有希望取得进展的领域，包括一个纳入宿主动态、空间结构和进化过程的理论框架，以及测试此类模型预测所需的数据。我们的综合研究为这一框架指明了方向，并表明从疾病和群落生态学界面工作的方法中可以更深入地了解病原体群落动态。
