Patch invasion in a spatial epidemic model

Understanding of patterns in disease spreading is an issue of significant current interest in epidemiology. In this paper, an epidemic model with spatial diffusion is considered. It was found that this model has stationary patterns including spotted and stripe patterns. Moreover, patch invasion was obtained in this reaction–diffusion epidemic model. It was well known that the spreading of disease takes place via irregular movement of separated patches due to environmental stochasticity. However, we show that pattern transition from stationary pattern to patch invasion appears to be possible in a fully deterministic parasite-host model, which may provide new insights to control the disease.