Ecological Context of Epidemiology

This chapter is focused on ecoepidemiology. It introduces and studies a number of models related to infectious diseases in animal populations. Animals are typically subject to ecological interactions. The chapter first introduces SI and SIR models of species subject to a generalist predator and studies the impact of selective and indiscriminate predation. The classical Lotka–Volterra predator–prey and competition models are reviewed together with their basic mathematical properties. Furthermore, the chapter includes and discusses a Lotka–Volterra predator–prey model with disease in prey and a Lotka–Volterra competition model with disease in one of the species. Hopf bifurcation and chaos are found in some of the ecoepidemiological models.