Dropping mortality by increasing connectivity in plant epidemics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a dynamical network model for plant epidemic spreading based on pathogen concentrations, revealing that increasing connectivity can reduce mortality after a peak at intermediate levels.

Contribution

It presents a novel pathogen abundance-based epidemic model on networks and analyzes how connectivity influences plant mortality, providing insights into epidemic control mechanisms.

Findings

Mortality peaks at intermediate network connectivity levels.

Higher average degrees lead to decreased plant mortality.

The model offers a new perspective on controlling plant epidemics.

Abstract

Pathogen introduction in plant communities can cause serious impact and biodiversity losses that may take long time to manage and restore. Effective control of epidemic spreading in the wild is a problem of paramount importance, because of its implications in conservation and potential economic losses. Understanding the mechanisms that hinder pathogen's propagation is, therefore, crucial. Usual modelization approaches in epidemic spreading are based in compartmentalized models, without keeping track of pathogen's concentrations during spreading. In this contribution we present and fully analyze a dynamical model for plant epidemic spreading based on pathogen's abundances. The model, which is defined on top of network substrates, is amenable to a deep mathematical analysis in the absence of a limit in the amount of pathogen a plant can tolerate before dying. In the presence of such death threshold, we observe that the fraction of dead plants peaks at intermediate values of network's connectivity, and mortality decreases for large average degrees. We discuss the implications of our results as mechanisms to halt infection propagation.