Measuring the transmission dynamics of a sexually transmitted disease.

ABSTRACT: 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 o

SUBMITTER: Ryder JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1257709 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature