Browsing by Subject "compartmental epidemiological model"

Within the last century humanity has grown significantly more numerous and more globally connected than ever before in its history. Together with the increased risks of climate change, we are more susceptible than ever to major epidemics and pandemics caused by novel zoonotic diseases. For these reasons it is not only important understand under which conditions novel pathogens are able to invade and spread in a host population but also to understand how these pathogens can be eradicated following an invasion event. In this thesis we present and study the demographic and evolutionary dynamics of a compartmental epidemiological model that includes a compartment for asymptomatic individuals, who require a second infection to become symptomatic and infectious. We show that the model exhibits a wide variety of demographic dynamical behaviour, all of which can be evolutionarily attracting configurations under simple evolutionary considerations. The model is an extreme simplification of the real world and excludes relevant information such as age and spatial structures of the population at hand. The aim of this thesis is to obtain a general understanding of how varying certain parameters on one hand allows a pathogen to invade a host population and, on the other hand, allows the host to eradicate an established pathogen, in particular, through the process of evolution.