Diseased Social Predators.

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Mathematical Biology
• Epidemiology

Background:

• Social predators gain hunting advantages through cooperation.
• Group living increases disease transmission risk in social predators.
• Allee effects, driven by foraging facilitation, impact predator population dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To model the effects of disease transmission on cooperative social predator population dynamics.
• To investigate how cooperation levels influence predator persistence under disease pressure.
• To identify critical thresholds for cooperation and disease transmissibility.

Main Methods:

• Developed a mathematical model of predator-prey dynamics with group hunting and Allee effects.
• Extended the model to include horizontal and vertical transmission of an infectious disease in predators.
• Analyzed equilibrium points, stability, and bifurcations of the nonlinear differential equation system.

Main Results:

• Weakly cooperating predators face unconditional extinction with highly transmissible diseases.
• Strong cooperation enables conditional predator persistence, creating bistable population dynamics.
• A critical cooperation level is identified to prevent unconditional extinction; large populations can survive due to cooperation.

Conclusions:

• Cooperation is crucial for social predator survival in the face of disease.
• Disease introduction can be fatal for small, declining social predator populations.
• Biocontrol using parasites may be insufficient for highly cooperating invasive predators.