title: Perspectives on the role of mobility, behavior, and time scales in the spread of diseases.
abstract: The dynamics, control, and evolution of communicable and vector-borne diseases are intimately connected to the joint dynamics of epidemiological, behavioral, and mobility processes that operate across multiple spatial, temporal, and organizational scales. The identification of a theoretical explanatory framework that accounts for the pattern regularity exhibited by a large number of host-parasite systems, including those sustained by host-vector epidemiological dynamics, is but one of the challenges facing the coevolving fields of computational, evolutionary, and theoretical epidemiology. Host-parasite epidemiological patterns, including epidemic outbreaks and endemic recurrent dynamics, are characteristic to well-identified regions of the world; the result of processes and constraints such as strain competition, host and vector mobility, and population structure operating over multiple scales in response to recurrent disturbances (like El Niño) and climatological and environmental perturbations over thousands of years. It is therefore important to identify and quantify the processes responsible for observed epidemiological macroscopic patterns: the result of individual interactions in changing social and ecological landscapes. In this perspective, we touch on some of the issues calling for the identification of an encompassing theoretical explanatory framework by identifying some of the limitations of existing theory, in the context of particular epidemiological systems. Fostering the reenergizing of research that aims at disentangling the role of epidemiological and socioeconomic forces on disease dynamics, better understood as complex adaptive systems, is a key aim of this perspective.
authors.affiliation: Simon A. Levin Mathematical and Computational Modeling Sciences Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-3901; ccchavez@asu.edu.|Departamento de Ingeniería Biomédica, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia 111711.|Office of the Rector, Yachay Tech University, Urcuqui, Ecuador 100119.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Castillo-Chavez
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, California State University, Fullerton, CA 92831.|Center for Computational and Applied Mathematics, California State University, Fullerton, CA 92831.
authors.forename: Derdei
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bichara
authors.affiliation: Simon A. Levin Mathematical and Computational Modeling Sciences Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-3901.|School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-4501.|Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601.
authors.forename: Benjamin R
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Morin
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002980:Climate; D003140:Communicable Disease Control; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000191:economics / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D004199:Disease Vectors; D004463:Ecology; D004777:Environment; D058872:Epidemics; D006790:Host-Parasite Interactions; D006801:Humans; D017146:Models, Organizational; D015233:Models, Statistical; D013995:Time; D000071244:Zika Virus; D000071243:Zika Virus Infection / Q000517:prevention & control
keywords: behavior; complex adaptive systems; infectious disease; mobility; risk