From bee species aggregation to models of disease avoidance: The Ben-Hur effect

Kamuela E. Yong; Edgar Díaz Herrera; Carlos Castillo-Chavez

Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1510.04364

From bee species aggregation to models of disease avoidance: The Ben-Hur effect

Kamuela E. Yong·Edgar Díaz Herrera·Carlos Castillo-Chavez

View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The movie Ben-Hur highlights the dynamics of contagion associated with leprosy, a pattern of forced aggregation driven by the emergence of symptoms and the fear of contagion. The 2014 Ebola outbreaks reaffirmed the dynamics of redistribution among symptomatic and asymptomatic or non-infected individuals as a way to avoid contagion. In this manuscript, we explore the establishment of clusters of infection via density-dependence avoidance (diffusive instability). We illustrate this possibility in two ways: using a phenomenological driven model where disease incidence is assumed to be a decreasing function of the size of the symptomatic population and with a model that accounts for the deliberate movement of individuals in response to a gradient of symptomatic infectious individuals. The results in this manuscript are preliminary but indicative of the role that behavior, here modeled in crude simplistic ways, may have on disease dynamics, particularly on the spatial redistribution of epidemiological classes.

Explore related subjects

q-bio.PE

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

Kamuela E. Yong, Edgar Díaz Herrera, Carlos Castillo-Chavez. 2015-11-04. From bee species aggregation to models of disease avoidance: The Ben-Hur effect. https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04364

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

A conceptual predator-prey model with super-long transients

Drawing on the understanding of the logistic map, we propose a simple predator-prey model where predators and prey adapt to each other, leading to the co-evolution of the system. The special dynamics observed in periodic windows contribute to the coexistence of multiple time scales, adding to the complexity of the system. Typical dynamics in ecosystems, such as the persistence and coexistence of population cycles and chaotic behaviors, the emergence of super-long transients, regime shifts, and the quantifying of resilience, are encapsulated within this single model. The simplicity of our model allows for detailed analysis, reinforcing its potential as a conceptual tool for understanding ecosystems deeply.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2026

Mutation Order and Selection Shape Intratumor Heterogeneity in Tumor Evolution

Cancer progression often requires multiple driver mutations, but the same drivers may be acquired in different orders. How these pathways jointly shape tumor clonal structure remains unclear. We develop a multitype branching-process model in which malignant transformation requires two driver mutations, distinguishing malignant cells by mutation order and the independent transformation event that founded their clone. Under a successive exponential approximation, we establish point-process limits for pathway-specific clone sizes and derive a closed-form expression for the limiting expected Simpson's index of the combined malignant population. When both mutation orders yield malignant cells with the same net growth rate, the index decomposes into effective pathway weights, determined by mutation rates and birth-death dynamics at preceding stages, and within-pathway concentration terms, determined by intermediate-to-malignant growth-rate ratios. A driver's effect on heterogeneity thus depends critically on when it is acquired. A strong driver acquired early expands the intermediate lineage and increases the supply of independent malignant founders, whereas the same driver acquired last strengthens the growth and age advantage of early-founded malignant clones. Under additive fitness effects, these opposing mechanisms can produce a non-monotone relationship between selective advantage and clonal concentration. Threshold-like non-additive fitness effects can generate highly concentrated malignant populations, while order-dependent terminal fitness causes the faster-growing pathway to dominate asymptotically. These results show how mutation order, mutational accessibility, selection, and epistasis jointly determine lineage-level intratumor heterogeneity.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2026

Phase transitions in microbial lineage trees

Microbial populations exhibit high cell-to-cell variability, which fundamentally shapes population behavior. A striking consequence is the existence of phase transitions, where small genetic or environmental changes trigger abrupt shifts in population dynamics. While biological phase transitions have often been proposed, connecting observed behavior to the underlying physics has remained challenging. We combine population genetics with statistical physics to show how phase transitions arise naturally in microbial populations. We highlight the existence of a first-order transition in a model of bacterial plasmid engineering and find a strict lower bound on the number of plasmids that can be stably maintained in a population.

q-bio.PE↗