Keeping the herds healthy and alert: implications of predator control for infectious disease |
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| Authors: | Craig Packer Robert D Holt Peter J Hudson Kevin D Lafferty Andrew P Dobson |
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| Institution: | Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St Paul, MN 55108, USA;Department of Zoology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA;Unit of Wildlife Epidemiology, Department of Biological and Molecular Sciences, University of Stirling, Scotland, FK9 4LA, UK;USGS, Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA;Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1003, USA |
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| Abstract: | Predator control programmes are generally implemented in an attempt to increase prey population sizes. However, predator removal could prove harmful to prey populations that are regulated primarily by parasitic infections rather than by predation. We develop models for microparasitic and macroparasitic infection that specify the conditions where predator removal will (a) increase the incidence of parasitic infection, (b) reduce the number of healthy individuals in the prey population and (c) decrease the overall size of the prey population. In general, predator removal is more likely to be harmful when the parasite is highly virulent, macroparasites are highly aggregated in their prey, hosts are long‐lived and the predators select infected prey. |
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| Keywords: | Host–parasite predator control predator–prey |
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