Parasites on parasites: coupled fluctuations in stacked contact processes

Abstract

We present a model for host-parasite dynamics which incorporates both vertical and horizontal transmission as well as spatial structure. Our model consists of stacked contact processes (CP), where the dynamics of the host is a simple CP on a lattice while the dynamics of the parasite is a secondary CP which sits on top of the host-occupied sites. In the simplest case, where infection does not incur any cost, we uncover a novel effect: a nonmonotonic dependence of parasite prevalence on host turnover. Inspired by natural examples of hyperparasitism, we extend our model to multiple levels of parasites and identify a transition between the maintenance of a finite and infinite number of levels, which we conjecture is connected to a roughening transition in models of surface-growth.

6 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Critical behavior and Griffiths effects in the disordered contact process
• Contact process with mobile disorder

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