scholarly journals Social fluidity mobilizes contagion in human and animal populations

eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan Colman ◽  
Vittoria Colizza ◽  
Ephraim M Hanks ◽  
David P Hughes ◽  
Shweta Bansal

Humans and other group-living animals tend to distribute their social effort disproportionately. Individuals predominantly interact with a small number of close companions while maintaining weaker social bonds with less familiar group members. By incorporating this behavior into a mathematical model, we find that a single parameter, which we refer to as social fluidity, controls the rate of social mixing within the group. Large values of social fluidity correspond to gregarious behavior, whereas small values signify the existence of persistent bonds between individuals. We compare the social fluidity of 13 species by applying the model to empirical human and animal social interaction data. To investigate how social behavior influences the likelihood of an epidemic outbreak, we derive an analytical expression of the relationship between social fluidity and the basic reproductive number of an infectious disease. For species that form more stable social bonds, the model describes frequency-dependent transmission that is sensitive to changes in social fluidity. As social fluidity increases, animal-disease systems become increasingly density-dependent. Finally, we demonstrate that social fluidity is a stronger predictor of disease outcomes than both group size and connectivity, and it provides an integrated framework for both density-dependent and frequency-dependent transmission.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewan Colman ◽  
Vittoria Colizza ◽  
Ephraim M. Hanks ◽  
David P. Hughes ◽  
Shweta Bansal

Humans and other group-living animals tend to distribute their social effort disproportionately. Individuals predominantly interact with a small number of close companions while maintaining weaker social bonds with less familiar group members. By incorporating this behaviour into a mathematical model we find that a single parameter, which we refer to as social fluidity, controls the rate of social mixing within the group. We compare the social fluidity of 13 species by applying the model to empirical human and animal social interaction data. To investigate how social behavior influences the likelihood of an epidemic outbreak we derive an analytical expression of the relationship between social fluidity and the basic reproductive number of an infectious disease. For highly fluid social behaviour disease transmission is revealed to be density-dependent. For species that form more stable social bonds, the model describes frequency-dependent transmission that is sensitive to changes in social fluidity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (07) ◽  
pp. 2050060
Author(s):  
Shaoli Wang ◽  
Achun Zhang ◽  
Fei Xu

In this paper, certain delayed virus dynamical models with cell-to-cell infection and density-dependent diffusion are investigated. For the viral model with a single strain, we have proved the well-posedness and studied the global stabilities of equilibria by defining the basic reproductive number [Formula: see text] and structuring proper Lyapunov functional. Moreover, we found that the infection-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if [Formula: see text], and the infection equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if [Formula: see text]. For the multi-strain model, we found that all viral strains coexist if the corresponding basic reproductive number [Formula: see text], while virus will extinct if [Formula: see text]. As a result, we found that delay and the density-dependent diffusion does not influence the global stability of the model with cell-to-cell infection and homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Danai Papageorgiou ◽  
David Rozen-Rechels ◽  
Brendah Nyaguthii ◽  
Damien R. Farine

Abstract Background A challenge faced by animals living in groups with stable long-term membership is to effectively coordinate their actions and maintain cohesion. However, as seasonal conditions alter the distribution of resources across a landscape, they can change the priority of group members and require groups to adapt and respond collectively across changing contexts. Little is known about how stable group-living animals collectively modify their movement behaviour in response to environment changes, such as those induced by seasonality. Further, it remains unclear how environment-induced changes in group-level movement behaviours might scale up to affect population-level properties, such as a population’s footprint. Methods Here we studied the collective movement of each distinct social group in a population of vulturine guineafowl (Acryllium vulturinum), a largely terrestrial and non-territorial bird. We used high-resolution GPS tracking of group members over 22 months, combined with continuous time movement models, to capture how and where groups moved under varying conditions, driven by seasonality and drought. Results Groups used larger areas, travelled longer distances, and moved to new places more often during drier seasons, causing a three-fold increase in the area used at the population level when conditions turned to drought. By contrast, groups used smaller areas with more regular movements during wetter seasons. Conclusions The consistent changes in collective outcomes we observed in response to different environments raise questions about the role of collective behaviour in facilitating, or impeding, the capacity for individuals to respond to novel environmental conditions. As droughts will be occurring more often under climate change, some group living animals may have to respond to them by expressing dramatic shifts in their regular movement patterns. These shifts can have consequences on their ranging behaviours that can scale up to alter the footprints of animal populations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Kong ◽  
Tao Li ◽  
Yuanmei Wang ◽  
Xinming Cheng ◽  
He Wang ◽  
...  

AbstractNowadays, online gambling has a great negative impact on the society. In order to study the effect of people’s psychological factors, anti-gambling policy, and social network topology on online gambling dynamics, a new SHGD (susceptible–hesitator–gambler–disclaimer) online gambling spreading model is proposed on scale-free networks. The spreading dynamics of online gambling is studied. The basic reproductive number $R_{0}$ R 0 is got and analyzed. The basic reproductive number $R_{0}$ R 0 is related to anti-gambling policy and the network topology. Then, gambling-free equilibrium $E_{0}$ E 0 and gambling-prevailing equilibrium $E_{ +} $ E + are obtained. The global stability of $E_{0}$ E 0 is analyzed. The global attractivity of $E_{ +} $ E + and the persistence of online gambling phenomenon are studied. Finally, the theoretical results are verified by some simulations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamid Khataee ◽  
Istvan Scheuring ◽  
Andras Czirok ◽  
Zoltan Neufeld

AbstractA better understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic responds to social distancing efforts is required for the control of future outbreaks and to calibrate partial lock-downs. We present quantitative relationships between key parameters characterizing the COVID-19 epidemiology and social distancing efforts of nine selected European countries. Epidemiological parameters were extracted from the number of daily deaths data, while mitigation efforts are estimated from mobile phone tracking data. The decrease of the basic reproductive number ($$R_0$$ R 0 ) as well as the duration of the initial exponential expansion phase of the epidemic strongly correlates with the magnitude of mobility reduction. Utilizing these relationships we decipher the relative impact of the timing and the extent of social distancing on the total death burden of the pandemic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Ellis ◽  
Daniel W. Franks ◽  
Michael N. Weiss ◽  
Michael A. Cant ◽  
Paolo Domenici ◽  
...  

Abstract In studies of social behaviour, social bonds are usually inferred from rates of interaction or association. This approach has revealed many important insights into the proximate formation and ultimate function of animal social structures. However, it remains challenging to compare social structure between systems or time-points because extrinsic factors, such as sampling methodology, can also influence the observed rate of association. As a consequence of these methodological challenges, it is difficult to analyse how patterns of social association change with demographic processes, such as the death of key social partners. Here we develop and illustrate the use of binomial mixture models to quantitatively compare patterns of social association between networks. We then use this method to investigate how patterns of social preferences in killer whales respond to demographic change. Resident killer whales are bisexually philopatric, and both sexes stay in close association with their mother in adulthood. We show that mothers and daughters show reduced social association after the birth of the daughter’s first offspring, but not after the birth of an offspring to the mother. We also show that whales whose mother is dead associate more with their opposite sex siblings and with their grandmother than whales whose mother is alive. Our work demonstrates the utility of using mixture models to compare social preferences between networks and between species. We also highlight other potential uses of this method such as to identify strong social bonds in animal populations. Significance statement Comparing patters of social associations between systems, or between the same systems at different times, is challenging due to the confounding effects of sampling and methodological differences. Here we present a method to allow social associations to be robustly classified and then compared between networks using binomial mixture models. We illustrate this method by showing how killer whales change their patterns of social association in response to the birth of calves and the death of their mother. We show that after the birth of her calf, females associate less with their mother. We also show that whales’ whose mother is dead associate more with their opposite sex siblings and grandmothers than whales’ whose mother is alive. This clearly demonstrates how this method can be used to examine fine scale temporal processes in animal social systems.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1164
Author(s):  
Weiwei Ling ◽  
Pinxia Wu ◽  
Xiumei Li ◽  
Liangjin Xie

By using differential equations with discontinuous right-hand sides, a dynamic model for vector-borne infectious disease under the discontinuous removal of infected trees was established after understanding the transmission mechanism of Huanglongbing (HLB) disease in citrus trees. Through calculation, the basic reproductive number of the model can be attained and the properties of the model are discussed. On this basis, the existence and global stability of the calculated equilibria are verified. Moreover, it was found that different I0 in the control strategy cannot change the dynamic properties of HLB disease. However, the lower the value of I0, the fewer HLB-infected citrus trees, which provides a theoretical basis for controlling HLB disease and reducing expenditure.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bingyi Yang ◽  
Angkana T. Huang ◽  
Bernardo Garcia-Carreras ◽  
William E. Hart ◽  
Andrea Staid ◽  
...  

AbstractNon-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) remain the only widely available tool for controlling the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We estimated weekly values of the effective basic reproductive number (Reff) using a mechanistic metapopulation model and associated these with county-level characteristics and NPIs in the United States (US). Interventions that included school and leisure activities closure and nursing home visiting bans were all associated with a median Reff below 1 when combined with either stay at home orders (median Reff 0.97, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.58–1.39) or face masks (median Reff 0.97, 95% CI 0.58–1.39). While direct causal effects of interventions remain unclear, our results suggest that relaxation of some NPIs will need to be counterbalanced by continuation and/or implementation of others.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey R. Freischel ◽  
Mehdi Damaghi ◽  
Jessica J. Cunningham ◽  
Arig Ibrahim-Hashim ◽  
Robert J. Gillies ◽  
...  

AbstractTumors are highly dynamic ecosystems in which diverse cancer cell subpopulations compete for space and resources. These complex, often non-linear interactions govern continuous spatial and temporal changes in the size and phenotypic properties of these subpopulations. Because intra-tumoral blood flow is often chaotic, competition for resources may be a critical selection factor in progression and prognosis. Here, we quantify resource competition using 3D spheroid cultures with MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 breast cancer cells. We hypothesized that MCF-7 cells, which primarily rely on efficient aerobic glucose metabolism, would dominate the population under normal pH and low glucose conditions; and MDA-MB-231 cells, which exhibit high levels of glycolytic metabolism, would dominate under low pH and high glucose conditions. In spheroids with single populations, MCF-7 cells exhibited equal or superior intrinsic growth rates (density-independent measure of success) and carrying capacities (density-dependent measure of success) when compared to MDA-MB-231 cells under all pH and nutrient conditions. Despite these advantages, when grown together, MCF-7 cells do not always outcompete MDA-MB-231 cells. MDA-MB-231 cells outcompete MCF-7 cells in low glucose conditions and coexistence is achieved in low pH conditions. Under all conditions, MDA-MB-231 has a stronger competitive effect (frequency-dependent interaction) on MCF-7 cells than vice-versa. This, and the inability of growth rate or carrying capacity when grown individually to predict the outcome of competition, suggests a reliance on frequency-dependent interactions and the need for competition assays. We frame these results in a game-theoretic (frequency-dependent) model of cancer cell interactions and conclude that competition assays can demonstrate critical density-independent, density-dependent and frequency-dependent interactions that likely contribute to in vivo outcomes.


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