A quantitative narrative on movement, disease and patch exploitation in nesting agent groups

Wayne M. Getz; Richard Salter; Krti Tallam

1 Disease ecology is a rich field of study that synthesizes inter alia demographic, epidemic, 2 behavioural, movement, spatial and community processes in an ecological setting [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] . 3 Thus, understanding the impact of particular diseases on wild populations in ecological 4 settings is a challenge that requires a comparison of the spatial and community structure 5 of these focal populations, as they might arise in the absence versus the presence of the 6 causative agents of the diseases of interest. One can undertake such studies in the Time. The action takes place over discrete time steps during which individuals (agents) 133 move through one or more cells, stay in a cell to exploit resources, or return to 134 their colony cell at regular intervals of time where they may reproduce. 135 Agents. Each agent has a biomass (which is a surrogate measure of its fitness), a 136 stress level, and a sex determined at birth. Females may reproduce on regular 137 returns back to their colonies by, essentially, fissioning into two (the parent retains 138 the majority of the biomass, while the offspring acquires the minority of biomass, 139 with some loss due to the cost of reproduction). limitations are assumed), provided they are sufficiently fit (i.e., large) and not too 164 stressed. Individuals die at a natural-mortality specified rate, plus an additional 165 disease-induced-mortality rate during their infectious period. 166 Fission-fusion. Individuals moving into a cell that contains a colony, will join the 167 group associated with that colony with a particular probability provided their own 168 colony is some specified ratio larger than their current colony. Epidemiology. We allow individuals to cycle through an S (susceptible), E (exposed 176 but not yet infectious), I (infectious), V (immune), S cycle at rates respectively period. Individuals in all stages are subject to a natural mortality rate, while 180 individuals in the I stage are subject to an additional disease-induced mortality 181 rate. 182