New publication
Guimaraes, P.R. Jr., M.A. de Menezes, R.W.
Baird, D. Lusseau, P. Guimaraes, and S.F. dos Reis. 2007. Vulnerability of a
killer whale social network to disease outbreaks. Physical Review E 76,
042901.
Abstract
Emerging infectious diseases are among the
main threats to conservation of biological diversity. A cruicial task facing
epidemiologists is to predict the vulnerability of populations of endangered
animals to disease outbreaks. In this context, the network structure of social
interactions within animal populations may affect disease spreading. However,
endangered animal populations are often small and to investigate the dynamics of
small networks is a difficult task. Using network theory, we show that the
social structure of an endangered population of mammal-eating killer whales is
vulnerable to disease outbreaks. This feature was found to be a consequence of
the combined effects of the toplogy and strength of social links among
individuals. Our results uncover a serious challenge for conservation of the
species and its ecosystem. In addition, this study shows that the network
approach can be useful to study dynamical processes in very small
networks.