title: Preliminary analysis of an agent-based model for a tick-borne disease.
abstract: Ticks have a unique life history including a distinct set of life stages and a single blood meal per life stage. This makes tick-host interactions more complex from a mathematical perspective. In addition, any model of these interactions must involve a significant degree of stochasticity on the individual tick level. In an attempt to quantify these relationships, I have developed an individual-based model of the interactions between ticks and their hosts as well as the transmission of tick-borne disease between the two populations. The results from this model are compared with those from previously published differential equation based population models. The findings show that the agent-based model produces significantly lower prevalence of disease in both the ticks and their hosts than what is predicted by a similar differential equation model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529, United States. hgaff@odu.edu
authors.forename: Holly
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gaff
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004199:Disease Vectors; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011157:Population Dynamics; D017282:Tick-Borne Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000503:physiopathology*