ArticleScientific reports2016
Infection-induced behavioural changes reduce connectivity and the potential for disease spread in wild mice contact networks.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 76 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
76 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 196 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sickness and the Social Brain: Love in the Time of COVID.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Fatigue in Sjögren's Disease - Integrating Biomedical and Psychosocial Aspects: A Narrative Review.Rheumatology and therapy · 2026Review
- Quantifying viral load and characterizing virus diversity in wildlife samples with target enrichment sequencing.Microbial genomics · 2025Article
- Seasonal contact and migration structure mass epidemics and inform outbreak preparedness in a vulnerable marine mammal.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Individual and group level health factors influence social networks of dairy calves.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A Palearctic view of a bat fungal disease.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Review
- A Natural Disaster Exacerbates and Redistributes Disease Risk Among Free-Ranging Macaques by Altering Social Structure.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Article
- Effects of gastrointestinal parasites on fecal glucocorticoids and behaviour in vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus).PloS one · 2025Article
- Prairie voles seek social contact with peer companions during immune challenge.Hormones and behavior · 2024Article
- Juvenile agile frogs spatially avoid ranavirus-infected conspecifics.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Animal Behaviour Packs a Punch: From Parasitism to Production, Pollution and Prevention in Grazing Livestock.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Review
- Neural cell-types and circuits linking thermoregulation and social behavior.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Associating with kin selects for disease resistance and against tolerance.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Hierarchically embedded scales of movement shape the social networks of vampire bats.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The role of social attraction and social avoidance in shaping modular networks.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Let's stick together: Infection enhances preferences for social grouping in a songbird species.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Stay close, but not too close: aerial image analysis reveals patterns of social distancing in seal colonies.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Article
- Sharing fluids shapes host social networks and pathogen traits.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
16 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Infection may modify the behaviour of the host and of its conspecifics in a group, potentially altering social connectivity. Because many infectious diseases are transmitted through social contact, social connectivity changes can impact transmission dynamics. Previous approaches to understanding disease transmission dynamics in wild populations were limited in their ability to disentangle different factors that determine the outcome of disease outbreaks. Here we ask how social connectivity is affected by infection and how this relationship impacts disease transmission dynamics. We experimentally manipulated disease status of wild house mice using an immune challenge and monitored social interactions within this free-living population before and after manipulation using automated tracking. The immune-challenged animals showed reduced connectivity to their social groups, which happened as a function of their own behaviour, rather than through conspecific avoidance. We incorporated these disease-induced changes of social connectivity among individuals into models of disease outbreaks over the empirically-derived networks. The models revealed that changes in host behaviour frequently resulted in the disease being contained to very few animals, as opposed to becoming widespread. Our results highlight the importance of considering the role that behavioural alterations during infection can have on social dynamics when evaluating the potential for disease outbreaks.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.