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Spatial parasite ecology and epidemiology: a review of methods and applications
Rachel L Pullan1, Hugh J W Sturrock, Ricardo J Soares Magalhães
1London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. rachel.pullan@lshtm.ac.uk
Abstract:
The distributions of parasitic diseases are determined by complex factors, including many that are distributed in space. A variety of statistical methods are now readily accessible to researchers providing opportunities for describing and ultimately understanding and predicting spatial distributions. This review provides an overview of the spatial statistical methods available to parasitologists, ecologists and epidemiologists and discusses how such methods have yielded new insights into the ecology and epidemiology of infection and disease. The review is structured according to the three major branches of spatial statistics: continuous spatial variation; discrete spatial variation; and spatial point processes.
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