Disease Ecology

Disease ecology is a rapidly developing subdiscipline of ecology concerned with how species interactions and abiotic components of the environment affect patterns and processes of disease. To date, disease ecology has focused largely on infectious disease. The scientific study of infectious disease has a long history dominated by specialists on the taxa of infectious agents (e.g., bacteriologists, virologists), mechanisms of host defense (e.g., immunologists), effects of infection on individual hosts (e.g., pathologists), effects on host populations (epidemiologists), and treatment (e.g., practicing physicians and veterinarians). Disease ecology arose as scientists increasingly recognized that the interactions between pathogen and host could be conceptually united with other interspecific interactions, such as those between predator and prey, competitors, or mutualists. At its simplest, an infectious disease consists of an interaction between one species of pathogen and one species of host. The evolution of disease ecology since the late 20th century has incorporated additional layers of complexity, including recognition that most pathogens infect multiple species of host, that hosts are infected with multiple pathogens, and that abiotic conditions (e.g., temperature, moisture) interact with biotic conditions to affect transmission and disease. As a consequence, a framework broader than the simplest host-pathogen system is often required to understand disease dynamics. Disease ecologists are interested both in the ecological causes of disease patterns (for instance, how the population density of a host influences transmission rates), and the ecological consequences of disease (for instance, how the population dynamics of a host species change as an epidemic progresses). Consequently, disease ecology today often integrates across several levels of biological organization, from molecular mechanisms of pathology and immunity; to individual-organism changes in health, survival, and reproduction; to population dynamics of hosts and pathogens; to community dynamics of hosts and pathogens; to impacts of disease on ecosystem processes; to ecosystem-level effects of climate change and landscape change on disease.