Department of Biology, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10115, Berlin, Germany.
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, 10115, Berlin, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2022 Feb 16;12(1):2588. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-06083-0.
We investigate the susceptible-infectious-recovered contagion dynamics in a system of self-propelled particles with polar alignment. Using agent-based simulations, we analyze the outbreak process for different combinations of the spatial parameters (alignment strength and Peclet number) and epidemic parameters (infection-lifetime transmissibility and duration of the individual infectious period). We show that the emerging spatial features strongly affect the contagion process. The ordered homogeneous states greatly disfavor infection spreading, due to their limited mixing, only achieving large outbreaks for high values of the individual infectious duration. The disordered homogeneous states also present low contagion capabilities, requiring relatively high values of both epidemic parameters to reach significant spreading. Instead, the inhomogeneous ordered states display high outbreak levels for a broad range of parameters. The formation of bands and clusters in these states favor infection propagation through a combination of processes that develop inside and outside of these structures. Our results highlight the importance of self-organized spatiotemporal features in a variety of contagion processes that can describe epidemics or other propagation dynamics, thus suggesting new approaches for understanding, predicting, and controlling their spreading in a variety of self-organized biological systems, ranging from bacterial swarms to animal groups and human crowds.
我们研究了具有极性对齐的自主粒子系统中的易感染-感染-恢复传染动力学。使用基于代理的模拟，我们分析了不同空间参数（对齐强度和佩克莱数）和流行参数（感染寿命传染性和个体感染期持续时间）组合的爆发过程。我们表明，新兴的空间特征强烈影响传染过程。有序均匀状态由于混合受限，极大地不利于感染传播，仅在个体感染持续时间较高时才会出现大爆发。无序均匀状态的传播能力也较低，需要相对较高的流行参数值才能达到显著的传播。相反，不均匀有序状态在广泛的参数范围内显示出较高的爆发水平。这些状态中带和簇的形成通过在这些结构内外发展的过程促进了感染的传播。我们的结果强调了自组织时空特征在各种可以描述传染病或其他传播动力学的传染过程中的重要性，从而为理解、预测和控制各种自组织生物系统中的传播提供了新的方法，这些系统范围从细菌群落到动物群体和人群。
