Competition and Facilitation between a Disease and a Predator in a Stunted Prey Population.

The role of diseases and parasites has received relatively little attention in modelling ecological dynamics despite mounting evidence of their importance in structuring communities. In contrast to predators, parasites do not necessarily kill their host but instead they may change host life history. Here, we study the impact of a parasite that selectively infects juvenile prey individuals and prevents them from maturing into adults.

Catastrophic collapse can occur without early warning: examples of silent catastrophes in structured ecological models.

Catastrophic and sudden collapses of ecosystems are sometimes preceded by early warning signals that potentially could be used to predict and prevent a forthcoming catastrophe. Universality of these early warning signals has been proposed, but no formal proof has been provided. Here, we show that in relatively simple ecological models the most commonly used early warning signals for a catastrophic collapse can be silent.

27 years of the HIV epidemic amongst men having sex with men in the Netherlands: an in depth mathematical model-based analysis.

Background: There has been increasing concern about a resurgent epidemic of HIV-1 amongst men having sex with men in the Netherlands, which has parallels with similar epidemics now occurring in many other countries.

Methods: A transmission model applicable to HIV-1 epidemics, including the use of antiretroviral therapy, is presented in a set of ordinary differential equations. The model is fitted by maximum likelihood to national HIV-1 and AIDS diagnosis data from 1980 to 2006, estimating parameters on average changes in unsafe sex and time to diagnosis.

Spatial pattern switching enables cyclic evolution in spatial epidemics.

Infectious diseases often spread as spatial epidemic outbreak waves. A number of model studies have shown that such spatial pattern formation can have important consequences for the evolution of pathogens. Here, we show that such spatial patterns can cause cyclic evolutionary dynamics in selection for the length of the infectious period.

Transmission networks of HIV-1 among men having sex with men in the Netherlands.

Objective: To obtain insight in the HIV-1 transmission networks among men having sex with men (MSM) in the Netherlands.

Design: A phylogenetic tree was constructed from polymerase sequences isolated from 2877 HIV-1 subtype B-infected patients monitored as part of the AIDS Therapy Evaluation in the Netherlands (ATHENA) nationwide observational cohort.

Methods: For MSM with a known date of infection, the most similar sequences were selected as potential transmission pairs when they clustered with bootstrap value of at least 99%.