Networks and the ecology of parasite transmission: A framework for wildlife parasitology

• Animal behaviour can generate heterogeneities in parasite transmission.
• Network models represent these heterogeneities as links (edges) among hosts (nodes).
• Variety of lifecycles and transmission methods can be represented using networks.
• Framework for exploring a range of ecological questions about parasite transmission.
• Challenges remain in their application to wildlife parasitology.

Social network analysis has recently emerged as a popular tool for understanding disease transmission in host populations. Although social networks have most extensively been applied to modelling the transmission of diseases through human populations, more recently the method has been applied to wildlife populations. The majority of examples from wildlife involve modelling the transmission of contagious microbes (mainly viruses and bacteria), normally in context of understanding wildlife disease epidemics. However, a growing number of studies have used networks to explore the ecology of parasite transmission in wildlife populations for a range of endemic parasites representing a diversity of life cycles and transmission methods. This review addresses the application of network models in representing the transmission of parasites with more complex life cycles, and illustrates the way in which this approach can be used to answer ecological questions about the transmission of parasites in wildlife populations.

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