Keeping the kids at home can limit the persistence of contagious pathogens in social animals

Lucile Marescot; Mathias Franz; Sarah Benhaiem; Heribert Hofer; Marion East; Stephanie Kramer-Schadt

Effects of restricting offspring between-group contact on epidemic fade-out probability 309 As theory predicts, epidemics faded-out at a R0 < 1, and did so regardless of the type of The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.11.036806 doi: bioRxiv preprint the ORC and the baseline scenario ( figure 4) . When looking at a single epidemic event in a 330 host population with ORC, we found that a new pool of susceptible juveniles (free from the 331 disease) emerged in the population a few weeks after initialization to form a peak, followed 332 by an increase in the number of susceptible adults ( figure 4 (a) ). The epidemic faded out from 333 the host population approximately 50 weeks after the initialization, both in terms of the 334 number of infected juveniles and infected adults ( figure 4(b) ). This corresponds 335 approximately to the age at which juveniles in the first cohort became adults and thus started 336 contacting (potentially infected) members of other groups (as Age-contact = 52 weeks, see 337 Table 1 The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.11.036806 doi: bioRxiv preprint