Wildlife Diseases: From Individuals to Ecosystems

Tompkins, Daniel M., Alison M. Dunn, Matthew J. Smith, and Sandra Telfer. 2011. “Wildlife Diseases: From Individuals to Ecosystems.” Journal of Animal Ecology 80 (1): 19–38. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2656.2010.01742.x.

Tompkins et al’s (2011) review paper synthesizes prior work on wildlife diseases that can potentially, or did, incorporate multiple scales. When disease ecology first emerged as a field, many studies focused on a singular scale. Those that did combine multiple scales tended to focus on large, direct impacts parasites on population or community dynamics. Recently, research has moved towards more nuanced effects of and on disease, such as indirect, or trait mediated, effects. This includes co-infections and their impacts on focal infections and disease dynamics within the population, behavioral or physiological changes resulting from disease, and the role of parasites on overall ecosystem connectivity. These examples all span multiple scales, however, are often investigated using individual-scale experiments, and paired with “correlational population-scale data”. This is a weakness that the authors point out, specifically that incorporation of multiple scales does not necessarily make the model multi-scale. They propose three phases of research, allowing for a feedback cycle between the later two, consisting of baseline case studies, theory development, and empirical evidence.

In Figure 2, they present their perspective on our current understanding of different scales of transmission, and the scales each incorporates, as well as the ability for transmission to be considered from a top-down, or “within host-ecosystem”, or bottom up, or “within host-organism” approach. With regards to our class, I think this paper is especially helpful in the framework of multi-scale consideration of wildlife diseases they present, as well as useful examples and pivotal papers in the field for individual, population, community, and ecosystem-level processes and questions.