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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2010

B. T. Grenfell
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
A. P. Dobson
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
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Summary

Introduction

The epidemiology of infectious diseases is one of the great triumphs of applied ecology. In particular, the public health importance of parasites has lead to a large literature, exploring their impact on the population dynamics, population genetics and evolutionary biology of human populations. An important milestone was the Dahlem Conference on population biology of infectious diseases, held in 1981. The resulting book (Anderson and May 1982) lucidly summarised the contemporary state of parasite ecology and epidemiology. The meeting was also important in bringing together theoretical and empirical workers from a range of relevant disciplines. Their deliberations, in a series of group reports, set the scene for many developments in parasite ecology over the following decade.

Following the advent of HIV/AIDS, there has since been a particular flowering in the quantitative epidemiology of human infections (Anderson and May 1991). By contrast, work on diseases of naturally fluctuating animal and plant populations has had a lower profile. Although there are large bodies of published research on theoretical and empirical aspects of the ecology of infectious diseases in naturally fluctuating host populations, there has been no recent attempt to bring these together systematically. This is partly happenstance but, as we shall see, probably also arises from a lack of empirical knowledge about the details of many interactions. The Isaac Newton Institute programme on epidemic models, held during January–June 1993, provided the ideal venue for addressing this gap between theory and practice. This volume is based on a workshop which we convened during the second week of March 1993.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1995

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  • Introduction
  • Edited by B. T. Grenfell, University of Cambridge, A. P. Dobson, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Book: Ecology of Infectious Diseases in Natural Populations
  • Online publication: 22 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511629396.001
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  • Introduction
  • Edited by B. T. Grenfell, University of Cambridge, A. P. Dobson, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Book: Ecology of Infectious Diseases in Natural Populations
  • Online publication: 22 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511629396.001
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by B. T. Grenfell, University of Cambridge, A. P. Dobson, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Book: Ecology of Infectious Diseases in Natural Populations
  • Online publication: 22 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511629396.001
Available formats
×