Journal
BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY
Volume 31, Issue 3, Pages 651-660Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/beheco/araa002
Keywords
coinfection; contact networks; demography; disease transmission; multibehavior; social structure
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [1216054, 1414296, 1559380, 0918308, 0941487, 0316800]
- Office of Naval Research BAA [10230702]
- Georgetown University
- Australian Government, Department of Education and Training
- Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship [DE170101132]
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci [941487] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Office Of Internatl Science &Engineering
- Office Of The Director [1559380] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Australian Research Council [DE170101132] Funding Source: Australian Research Council
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Direct pathogen and parasite transmission is fundamentally driven by a population's contact network structure and its demographic composition and is further modulated by pathogen life-history traits. Importantly, populations are most often concurrently exposed to a suite of pathogens, which is rarely investigated, because contact networks are typically inferred from spatial proximity only. Here, we use 5 years of detailed observations of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursions aduncus) that distinguish between four different types of social contact. We investigate how demography (sex and age) affects these different social behaviors. Three of the four social behaviors can he used as a proxy for understanding key routes of direct pathogen transmission (sexual contact, skin contact, and aerosol contact of respiratory vapor above the water surface). We quantify the demography-dependent network connectedness, representing the risk of exposure associated with the three pathogen transmission routes, and quantify coexposure risks and relate them to individual sociability. Our results suggest demography-driven disease risk in bottlenose dolphins, with males at greater risk than females, and transmission route-dependent implications for different age classes. We hypothesize that male alliance formation and the divergent reproductive strategies in males and females drive the demography-dependent connectedness and, hence, exposure risk to pathogens. Our study provides evidence for the risk of coexposure to pathogens transmitted along different transmission routes and that they relate to individual sociability. Hence, our results highlight the importance of a multibehavioral approach for a more complete understanding of the overall pathogen transmission risk in animal populations, as well as the cumulative costs of sociality.
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