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National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis

Project Description

Epidemiology is the study of the causes, distribution, and control of disease in populations. One of the most intriguing results to emerge from epidemiology in recent years is the extent to which the structure of social networks influences both the dynamics of disease outbreaks and the potential for disease control. Although the impact of social network structure is now widely appreciated, the underlying mechanisms of social network self-organization are poorly understood. This working group will use wild primates as a model system for exploring the mechanisms of disease network self-organization. Field primatologists, quantitative ecologists, and wildlife epidemiologists will use behavioral and ecological data to build models of social network self-organization in gorillas, chimpanzees, and monkeys.

Disease has recently joined poaching and habitat loss as one of the major threats to tropical wildlife and a primary working group objective will be to use to our models to find efficient strategies for vaccinating wild primates. A particular emphasis will be placed on optimal vaccination in protected areas and on efficiently vaccinating against Ebola virus, which has killed about one third of the gorillas in protected areas over the last 15 years.

Working Group Participants

Principal Investigator(s)

Peter D. Walsh

Project Dates

Start: January 1, 2008

End: July 1, 2009

completed

Participants

Lauren Ancel Meyers
University of Texas, Austin
Shweta Bansal
University of Texas, Austin
Julio Benavides
Université de Montpellier II
Christopher Boesch
Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Denis Boyer
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Damien Caillaud
University of Texas, Austin
Margaret C. Crofoot
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Wayne M. Getz
University of California, Berkeley
Katie Hampson
Princeton University
Lauren Meyers
University of Texas, Austin
Sadie J. Ryan
University of California, Santa Barbara
Liliana Salvador
Princeton University
Samuel V. Scarpino
University of Texas, Austin
Peter D. Walsh
Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Dennis Wylie
University of California, Berkeley

Products

  1. Dissertation or Thesis / 2011

    Ecological of infectious diseases in social primates

  2. Journal Article / 2012

    Transmission of infectious diseases en route to habitat hotspots

  3. Presentations / 2009

    Animal movement and some ecological implications

  4. Presentations / 2009

    Animal movement and some ecological implications

  5. Presentations / 2009

    Statistical physics of animal displacements

  6. Journal Article / 2010

    Modelling the mobility of living organisms in heterogeneous landscapes: Does memory improve foraging success?

  7. Presentations / 2010

    Power-law distributions in the movement patterns of living organisms

  8. Presentations / 2010

    Power-laws in animal movement patterns

  9. Presentations / 2010

    Statistical-physical description of animal displacements

  10. Presentations / 2010

    The movement of living organisms and statistical physics

  11. Presentations / 2011

    Living organisms on the move: a perspective from complex systems

  12. Presentations / 2011

    Space use by animals: Memory, home ranges and scaling laws

  13. Journal Article / 2012

    Non-random walks in monkeys and humans

  14. Presentations / 2010

    Integrating feeding ecology and network theory to understand the transmission of infectious diseases in social primates

  15. Journal Article / 2010

    Modeling the spatial distribution and fruiting pattern of a key tree species in a neotropical forest: Methodology and potential applications

  16. Presentations / 2010

    Network and behavioral models for disease dynamics and control

  17. Presentations / 2010

    Ranging patterns in great apes: Roles of food resource distribution, spatial memory and inter-group feeding competition

  18. Presentations / 2010

    Using Capture-Mark-Recapture to estimate gorilla susceptibility to Ebola virus

  19. Presentations / 2010

    No need for violence: Memory-based foraging and conspecific resource depletion can explain primate "war zones"

  20. Presentations / 2010

    No need for violence: Memory-based foraging and conspecific resource depletion can explain primate "war zones"

  21. Journal Article / 2011

    Consequences of non-intervention for infectious disease in African Great Apes

  22. Data Set / 2012

    Recovery simulations for infectious diseases in African Great Apes

  23. Presentations / 2008

    Animal movement and foraging strategies

  24. Presentations / 2008

    Foraging decisions and animal grouping patterns

  25. Presentations / 2008

    Foraging strategies and primate grouping patterns: “Not all who wander are lost”

  26. Dissertation or Thesis / 2011

    The ecological and evolutionary analysis of foraging animal movement

  27. Journal Article / 2010

    Correspondence: Monkey and cell-phone-user mobilities scale similarly

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