Mackey Crystal, Kribs Christopher
Department of Mathematics, The University of Texas at Arlington, Box 19408, Arlington, TX 76019 USA.
J Theor Biol. 2021 Feb 21;511:110553. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2020.110553. Epub 2020 Dec 15.
Etosha National Park (ENP) is located in Namibia, where an annual anthrax outbreak (caused by Bacillus anthracis) occurs among grazing animals such as zebras. This increases the number of carcasses in ENP, allowing for scavengers such as jackals to feed off these carcasses. Carcasses provide a location of conspecific interaction between jackals and may be a means of disease transmission among the jackals. We are interested in studying how a disease in the zebra population may help to propagate a different disease (rabies) in the jackal population since the carcasses are providing a location of interaction between the jackals. We aim to answer the following research question: how do anthrax and rabies affect each other's ability to spread? Standard qualitative analysis techniques distinguished outcomes (stable equilibria) using reproduction numbers as threshold quantities. We found that rabies helps anthrax, and a little anthrax helps rabies invade, but a lot of anthrax prevents rabies by reducing the jackal population through its food source.
埃托沙国家公园（ENP）位于纳米比亚，在那里，斑马等食草动物每年都会爆发炭疽疫情（由炭疽杆菌引起）。这增加了埃托沙国家公园内尸体的数量，使得胡狼等 scavengers 能够以这些尸体为食。尸体为胡狼之间的同种相互作用提供了场所，并且可能是胡狼之间疾病传播的一种途径。由于尸体为胡狼之间提供了相互作用的场所，我们有兴趣研究斑马种群中的一种疾病如何可能有助于在胡狼种群中传播另一种疾病（狂犬病）。我们旨在回答以下研究问题：炭疽和狂犬病如何相互影响彼此的传播能力？标准的定性分析技术使用繁殖数作为阈值量来区分结果（稳定平衡点）。我们发现狂犬病有助于炭疽传播，少量炭疽有助于狂犬病入侵，但大量炭疽会通过减少胡狼的食物来源来阻止狂犬病传播。
