Measuring the Transmission Dynamics of a Sexually Transmitted Disease

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) occur throughout the animal kingdom and are generally thought to affect host population dynamics and evolution very differently from other directly transmitted infectious diseases. In particular, STDs are not thought to have threshold densities for persistence or...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2005-10, Vol.102 (42), p.15140-15143
Main Authors: Ryder, Jonathan J., Webberley, K. Mary, Boots, Michael, Knell, Robert J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biological Sciences
Coleoptera - parasitology
Data transmission
Disease transmission
Ecology
Experiments
Female
Female animals
Host-Parasite Interactions
Infections
Insects
Male
Mating behavior
Mating systems
Mites - physiology
Models, Theoretical
Parasite hosts
Population density
Population Dynamics
Sexual Behavior, Animal - physiology
Sexual transmission
Sexually transmitted diseases
Sexually Transmitted Diseases - epidemiology
Sexually Transmitted Diseases - transmission
STD
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Summary:Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) occur throughout the animal kingdom and are generally thought to affect host population dynamics and evolution very differently from other directly transmitted infectious diseases. In particular, STDs are not thought to have threshold densities for persistence or to be able to regulate host population density independently; they may also have the potential to cause host extinction. However, these expectations follow from a theory that assumes that the rate of STD spread depends on the proportion (rather than the density) of individuals infected in a population. We show here that this key assumption ("frequency dependence"), which has not previously been tested in an animal STD system, is invalid in a simple and general experimental model. Transmission of an STD in the two-spot ladybird depended more on the density of infected individuals in the study population than on their frequency. We argue that, in this system, and in many other animal STDs in which population density affects sexual contact rate, population dynamics may exhibit some characteristics that are normally reserved for diseases with density-dependent transmission.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0505139102