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From promoting energy flow through food webs to mediating interactions between free-living species, parasites play important roles in their communities by maintaining community stability and functioning, and promoting biodiversity. However, global change is impacting the ways in which parasites interact with and spread amongst their hosts, and questions remain regarding how a changing world will affect host-parasite and disease systems, and how mathematical models can be used to advance our understanding. Here, I draw from ecological theory and disease ecology to evaluate the estimability of within-host population dynamics models, explore the impacts of thermal variability on the establishment and maintenance of within-host parasite diversity and among-host transmissibility, and assess the predictability of warming-induced epidemics. I show that parameter and behavioural uncertainty can jointly limit the estimability of within-host population dynamics models, that thermal variability can promote parasite diversity within hosts, and that the pervasive detection of false positives might limit the utility of existing methods of predicting epidemic emergence. More broadly, ecologists are often interested in using mathematical models to describe or predict the long-term behaviour of ecological systems. However, ecological dynamics are the products of processes that occur over different timescales and are subject to change. For example, differences in reproductive rates, lifespans, and species interactions can produce transient dynamics, while external cycles and seasonal or anthropogenic forcing can induce a regime shift. While methods have been developed to identify and predict specific types of regimes shifts, differentiating between types of regime shifts remains a challenge. Here, I discuss preliminary plans to develop a framework for identifying and discriminating between types of regime shifts, and the applicability of these concepts in conservation biology. 

 

Also on zoom https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/98969645841