The interplay between determinism and stochasticity in childhood diseases

Pejman Rohani; Matthew J. Keeling; Bryan T. Grenfell

doi:10.1086/339467

The interplay between determinism and stochasticity in childhood diseases

Pejman Rohani, Matthew J. Keeling, Bryan T. Grenfell

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

62 Scopus citations

Abstract

An important issue in the history of ecology has been the study of the relative importance of deterministic forces and processes noise in shaping the dynamics of ecological populations. We address this question by exploring the temporal dynamics of two childhood infections, measles and whooping cough, in England and Wales. We demonstrate that epidemics of whooping cough are strongly influenced by stochasticity; fully deterministic approaches cannot achieve even a qualitative fit to the observed data. In contrast, measles dynamics are extremely well explained by a deterministic model. These differences are shown to be caused by their contrasting responses to dynamical noise due to different infectious periods.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	469-481
Number of pages	13
Journal	American Naturalist
Volume	159
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1086/339467
State	Published - 2002
Externally published	Yes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

Keywords

Epidemiological models
Population dynamics
Seasonality
Stochasticity

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10.1086/339467

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AB - An important issue in the history of ecology has been the study of the relative importance of deterministic forces and processes noise in shaping the dynamics of ecological populations. We address this question by exploring the temporal dynamics of two childhood infections, measles and whooping cough, in England and Wales. We demonstrate that epidemics of whooping cough are strongly influenced by stochasticity; fully deterministic approaches cannot achieve even a qualitative fit to the observed data. In contrast, measles dynamics are extremely well explained by a deterministic model. These differences are shown to be caused by their contrasting responses to dynamical noise due to different infectious periods.

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KW - Seasonality

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The interplay between determinism and stochasticity in childhood diseases

Abstract

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Keywords

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