ADAPTIVE GROWING NETWORKS COEVOLVING WITH THE SPREAD OF DISEASES

Abstract

We study the evolution of an adaptive network whose growth occurs simultaneously to the propagation of a disease. The dynamics of the network growth is entangled to the spread of the disease, since the probability for a node in the network to get new links depends on its healthy or infected state. We analyze the influence that such coupling mechanism has both on the diffusion of the disease and on the structure of the growing networks. Our results point out that a strong interplay between network growth and disease spreading produces networks with degree–degree correlations and nontrivial clustering patterns.