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

Wayne M. Getz; Richard Salter; Krti Tallam

Our model is initially seeded for potential disease outbreaks in that one of the agents at 271 simulation initialization is in disease state E (exposed), while the remaining 349 are in 272 disease state S (susceptible). To set up potential pathogen transmission outbreak 273 scenarios requires that the transmission parameter be positive (i.e. β > 0). To explore 274 the nature of these bimodal distributions for our model, we simulated 15 instances each 275 of disease dynamics for the cases β = 0.01, 0.2, and 0.03. The amount of time it took 276 for the number of exposed and infected individuals to fall to zero in each of these cases 277 is represented in the histograms plotted in Fig. 6A . The agent dynamics in the 278 longest-lasting of these 45 runs is illustrated in Fig. 6B . In these simulations, we note 279 that the only effect of pathogens on host-population dynamics is through the 280 assumption that individuals in disease states E and I do not reproduce, and not through 281 disease-induced mortality (considered next).