Speaker
Description
Recovery from acute infectious diseases can establish a host’s cross-resistance to other infectious diseases or other strains of the same disease. Unlike many other ecological contexts, diseases such as rhinovirus can offer very high diversity (of strains) in the same local community over long periods of time. In addition to high diversity, rhinovirus has complex patterns of temporary cross-resistance. We have developed a set of mathematical models to analyze how these patterns of cross-resistance can enhance or diminish ecological diversity over time, with a focus on comparing the differing impacts that resistance between strains and resistance from the same strain have on coexistence outcomes. Using a mix of analytical and numerical techniques to determine cross-resistance impacts on single- and multi-strain coexistence outcomes, we show that intra-strain cross-immunity has a strong negative impact on multi-strain coexistence. Inter-strain cross-immunity generates a much smaller, but positive impact on coexistence, but primarily when it impacts strains with higher infectiousness more than those with lower infectiousness. These idiosyncratic patterns of cross-resistance thus create predictable patterns of coexistence among strains that differ across multiple trait axes and shape the structure of infectious disease communities.
