Characterizing reservoirs of infection and the maintenance of pathogens in ecosystems

We use a previously published compartmental model of the dynamics of pathogens in ecosystems to define and explore the concepts of maintenance host, maintenance community and reservoir of infection in a full ecological context of interacting host and non-host species. We show that, contrary to their current use in the literature, these concepts can only be characterized relative to the ecosystem in which the host species are embedded, and are not 'life-history traits' of (groups of) species. We give a number of examples to demonstrate that the same (group of) host species can lose or gain maintenance or reservoir capability as a result of a changing ecosystem context, even when these changes primarily affect non-hosts. One therefore has to be careful in designating host species as either maintenance or reservoir in absolute terms.