The Ecology Book

68

PARASITES AND

PATHOGENS CONTROL

POPULATIONS LIKE

PREDATORS

ECOLOGICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY

E

pidemiology is the study

of how disease spreads

through a population. Its

initial application was to human

diseases, but its methods have

been recognized as an effective

way of modeling populations of

other organisms, too.

Ecologists have long known

that the size of an animal or plant

population and its growth rate

depend on the availability of food,

living space, and levels of

predation. In the 1970s, British

epidemiologist Roy Anderson and

Australian scientist Robert May

showed how parasites and

infections from pathogens such as

bacteria and viruses limited the

IN CONTEXT

KEY FIGURES

Roy Anderson (1947–),

Robert May (1936–)

BEFORE

1662 English statistician John

Graunt seeks to classify causes

of death in London in Natural

and Political Observations

made upon the Bills of Mortality.

1927 Scottish scientists

Anderson Gray McKendrick

and William Ogilvy Kermack

develop an epidemic model for

infected, uninfected, and

immune individuals.

AFTER

1996 American epidemiologist

James S. Koopman calls for

greater use of computational

technologies to simulate

disease generation and spread.

2018 A global team tracks the

origins and spread of a fungus

devastating frog populations.

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