Human mobility networks and persistence of rapidly mutating pathogens

Rapidly mutating pathogens may be able to persist in the population and reach an endemic equilibrium by escaping hosts' acquired immunity. For such diseases, multiple biological, environmental and population-level mechanisms determine the dynamics of the outbreak, including pathogen's epidemiological traits (e.g. transmissibility, infectious period and duration of immunity), seasonality, interaction with other circulating strains and hosts' mixing and spatial fragmentation. Here, we study a susceptible-infected-recovered-susceptible model on a metapopulation where individuals are distributed in subpopulations connected via a network of mobility flows. Through extensive numerical simulations, we explore the phase space of pathogen's persistence and map the dynamical regimes of the pathogen following emergence. Our results show that spatial fragmentation and mobility play a key role in the persistence of the disease whose maximum is reached at intermediate mobility values. We describe the occurrence of different phenomena including local extinction and emergence of epidemic waves, and assess the conditions for large scale spreading. Findings are highlighted in reference to previous works and to real scenarios. Our work uncovers the crucial role of hosts' mobility on the ecological dynamics of rapidly mutating pathogens, opening the path for further studies on disease ecology in the presence of a complex and heterogeneous environment.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figures. Submitted for publicatio

The role of predator overlap in the robustness and extinction of a four species predator-prey network

Predators and preys often form species networks with asymmetric patterns of interaction. We study the dynamics of a four species network consisting of two weakly connected predator-prey pairs. We focus our analysis on the effects of the cross interaction between the predator of the first pair and the prey of the second pair. This is an example where the predator overlap, which is the proportion of predators that a given prey shares with other preys, is not uniform across the network due to asymmetries in patterns of interaction. We explore the behavior of the system under different interaction strengths and study the dynamics of survival and extinction. In particular, we consider situations in which the four species have initial populations lower than their long-term equilibrium, simulating catastrophic situations in which their abundances are reduced due to human action or environmental change. We show that, under these reduced initial conditions, and depending on the strength of the cross interaction, the populations tend to oscillate before re-equilibrating, disturbing the community equilibrium and sometimes reaching values that are only a small fraction of the equilibrium population, potentially leading to their extinction. We predict that, contrary to one`s intuition, the most likely scenario is the extinction of the less predated preys. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)CAPESCNPqConselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)FAPES

ClimaMeter: Contextualising Extreme Weather in a Changing Climate

Climate change is a global challenge with multiple far-reaching consequences, including the intensification and increased frequency of many extreme weather events. In response to this pressing issue, we present ClimaMeter, a platform designed to assess and contextualise extreme weather events relative to climate change. The platform offers near real-time insights into the dynamics of extreme events, serving as a resource for researchers, policymakers, and being a science dissemination tool for the general public. ClimaMeter currently analyses heatwaves, cold spells, heavy precipitation and windstorms. This paper 5 elucidates the methodology, data sources, and analytical techniques on which ClimaMeter relies, providing a comprehensive overview of its scientific foundation. To illustrate Climameter, we provide four examples, the December 2022 North American Winter Storm, the August 2023 Guangdong-Hong Kong Flood, the late 2023 French Heatwave and the July 2023 windstorm Poly. They underscore the role of ClimaMeter in fostering a deeper understanding of the complex interactions between climate change and extreme weather, with the hope of ultimately contributing to informed decision-making and climate resilience

ClimaMeter: Contextualising Extreme Weather in a Changing Climate

Climate change is a global challenge with multiple far-reaching consequences, including the intensification and increased frequency of many extreme weather events. In response to this pressing issue, we present ClimaMeter, a platform designed to assess and contextualise extreme weather events relative to climate change. The platform offers near real-time insights into the dynamics of extreme events, serving as a resource for researchers, policymakers, and being a science dissemination tool for the general public. ClimaMeter currently analyses heatwaves, cold spells, heavy precipitation and windstorms. This paper 5 elucidates the methodology, data sources, and analytical techniques on which ClimaMeter relies, providing a comprehensive overview of its scientific foundation. To illustrate Climameter, we provide four examples, the December 2022 North American Winter Storm, the August 2023 Guangdong-Hong Kong Flood, the late 2023 French Heatwave and the July 2023 windstorm Poly. They underscore the role of ClimaMeter in fostering a deeper understanding of the complex interactions between climate change and extreme weather, with the hope of ultimately contributing to informed decision-making and climate resilience

ClimaMeter: Contextualising Extreme Weather in a Changing Climate

Climate change is a global challenge with multiple far-reaching consequences, including the intensification and increased frequency of many extreme weather events. In response to this pressing issue, we present ClimaMeter, a platform designed to assess and contextualise extreme weather events relative to climate change. The platform offers near real-time insights into the dynamics of extreme events, serving as a resource for researchers, policymakers, and being a science dissemination tool for the general public. ClimaMeter currently analyses heatwaves, cold spells, heavy precipitation and windstorms. This paper 5 elucidates the methodology, data sources, and analytical techniques on which ClimaMeter relies, providing a comprehensive overview of its scientific foundation. To illustrate Climameter, we provide four examples, the December 2022 North American Winter Storm, the August 2023 Guangdong-Hong Kong Flood, the late 2023 French Heatwave and the July 2023 windstorm Poly. They underscore the role of ClimaMeter in fostering a deeper understanding of the complex interactions between climate change and extreme weather, with the hope of ultimately contributing to informed decision-making and climate resilience

ClimaMeter: Contextualising Extreme Weather in a Changing Climate

Climate change is a global challenge with multiple far-reaching consequences, including the intensification and increased frequency of many extreme weather events. In response to this pressing issue, we present ClimaMeter, a platform designed to assess and contextualise extreme weather events relative to climate change. The platform offers near real-time insights into the dynamics of extreme events, serving as a resource for researchers, policymakers, and being a science dissemination tool for the general public. ClimaMeter currently analyses heatwaves, cold spells, heavy precipitation and windstorms. This paper 5 elucidates the methodology, data sources, and analytical techniques on which ClimaMeter relies, providing a comprehensive overview of its scientific foundation. To illustrate Climameter, we provide four examples, the December 2022 North American Winter Storm, the August 2023 Guangdong-Hong Kong Flood, the late 2023 French Heatwave and the July 2023 windstorm Poly. They underscore the role of ClimaMeter in fostering a deeper understanding of the complex interactions between climate change and extreme weather, with the hope of ultimately contributing to informed decision-making and climate resilience

ClimaMeter: contextualizing extreme weather in a changing climate

International audienceClimate change is a global challenge with multiple far-reaching consequences, including the intensification and increased frequency of many extreme-weather events. In response to this pressing issue, we present ClimaMeter, a platform designed to assess and contextualize extreme-weather events relative to climate change. The platform offers near-real-time insights into the dynamics of extreme events, serving as a resource for researchers and policymakers while also being a science dissemination tool for the general public. ClimaMeter currently analyses heatwaves, cold spells, heavy precipitation, and windstorms. This paper elucidates the methodology, data sources, and analytical techniques on which ClimaMeter relies, providing a comprehensive overview of its scientific foundation. We further present two case studies: the late 2023 French heatwave and the July 2023 Storm Poly. We use two distinct datasets for each case study, namely Multi-Source Weather (MSWX) data, which serve as the reference for our rapid-attribution protocol, and the ERA5 dataset, widely regarded as the leading global climate reanalysis. These examples highlight both the strengths and limitations of ClimaMeter in expounding the link between climate change and the dynamics of extreme-weather events