Adaptive altruistic strategy in cyclic models during an epidemic

Abstract

We investigate a cyclic game system where organisms face an epidemic beyond being threatened by natural enemies. As a survival strategy, individuals of one out of the species usually safeguard themselves by approaching the enemies of their enemies and performing social distancing to escape contamination when an outbreak affects the neighbourhood. We simulate how the survival movement strategy to local epidemic surges must adapt if a pathogen mutation makes the disease deadlier. We study the spatial distribution of local outbreaks and observe the influence of disease mortality on individuals' spatial organisation. We show that adapting the survival movement strategy for a high mortality disease demands an altruistic behaviour of the organisms since their death risk increases. Despite weakening the disease transmission chain, which benefits the species, abandoning refuges provided by safeguarding social interaction increases the vulnerability to being eliminated in the cyclic game. Considering that not all individuals exhibit altruism, we find the relative growth in the species density as a function of the proportion of individuals behaving altruistically. Our results may be helpful for biologists and data scientists to understand how adaptive altruistic processes can affect population dynamics in complex systems.

7 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• How multiple weak species jeopardise biodiversity in spatial rock-paper-scissors models
• Trade-off between reproduction and mobility prolongs organisms' survival in rock-paper-scissors models
• Ambush strategy enhances organisms' performance in rock-paper-scissors games
• Impact of reproduction-mobility trade-off on biodiversity in rock-paper-scissors models in changing environmental conditions
• Spatial dynamics of synergistic coinfection in rock-paper-scissors models
• Mobility restrictions in response to local epidemic outbreaks in rock-paper-scissors models