Highly dynamic animal contact network and implications on disease transmission

Chen, Shi; White, Brad J.; Sanderson, Michael W.; Amrine, David E.; Ilany, Amiyaal; Lanzas, Cristina

In our simulation of disease dynamics, we assume that the disease does not substantially change the individual's behavior. This implicit assumption is appropriate for non-clinical conditions and for demonstrating the importance of dynamic networks on disease dynamics. Nevertheless, in realistic systems modeling clinical diseases, animals may change their behavior during the infected stage, resulting in a different contact pattern [37] [38] [39] [40] . Furthermore we have assumed frequency-dependent transmission through contact to simplify the model. To model more realistic directly transmitted disease systems and design effective controlling strategies, it is important to make the correct assumptions about transmission mode (frequencydependent or density-dependent, or a combination of both), observe the actual contact network for all the individuals over time, and understand both temporal and individual heterogeneity in the contact network [41] [42] [43] .