Synergy in spreading processes: from exploitative to explorative foraging strategies

TL;DR

This paper introduces an epidemiological model with synergistic effects influencing infection dynamics, revealing how different synergy types lead to exploitative or explorative spreading behaviors with distinct invasion patterns.

Contribution

It presents a novel model incorporating synergistic effects on infectivity and susceptibility, linking epidemic spread to correlated bond-percolation and analyzing the impact on invasion strategies.

Findings

Constructive synergy causes rapid, large-scale infections.

Interfering synergy results in slower, sparser spread.

Model maps to correlated bond-percolation affecting spread mechanisms.

Abstract

An epidemiological model which incorporates synergistic effects that allow the infectivity and/or susceptibility of hosts to be dependent on the number of infected neighbours is proposed. Constructive synergy induces an exploitative behaviour which results in a rapid invasion that infects a large number of hosts. Interfering synergy leads to a slower and sparser explorative foraging strategy that traverses larger distances by infecting fewer hosts. The model can be mapped to a dynamical bond-percolation with spatial correlations that affect the mechanism of spread but do not influence the critical behaviour of epidemics.