Collective behavior and parasite transmission

Abstract

AbstractThe collective outcomes of animal societies are driven by processes at multiple levels of biological organization. Individuals’ traits influence the frequency and nature of social interactions that generate emergent properties like collective behavior and disease dynamics, perhaps simultaneously. Therefore, the composition of individual phenotypes in a group will influence the ability to execute collective behaviors and the concomitant risk of disease outbreaks. This may be especially true when considering the presence of keystone individuals which exert inordinate influence over social processes. However, the phenotypic compositions that lead to success in one context may be detrimental in other contexts. For example, groups containing individuals that are more aggressive may excel in collective foraging but also spread pathogens at a faster rate. Therefore, group composition may shift towards mixtures of phenotypes which resolve this trade-off. This chapter reviews the interrelatedness between collective behavior and parasite transmission, including mechanisms by which groups can optimally balance conflicting collective demands, and proposes some future directions in collective behavior-parasitism research.