We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Invasiveness of plant pathogens depends on the spatial scale of host distribution.
- Authors
Mikaberidze, Alexey; Mundt, Christopher C.; Bonhoeffer, Sebastian
- Abstract
Plant diseases often cause serious yield losses in agriculture. A pathogen's invasiveness can be quantified by the basic reproductive number, R0. Since pathogen transmission between host plants depends on the spatial separation between them, R0 is strongly influenced by the spatial scale of the host distribution.We present a proof of principle of a novel approach to estimate the basic reproductive number, R0, of plant pathogens as a function of the size of a field planted with crops and its aspect ratio. This general approach is based on a spatially explicit population dynamical model. The basic reproductive number was found to increase with the field size at small field sizes and to saturate to a constant value at large field sizes. It reaches a maximum in square fields and decreases as the field becomes elongated. This pattern appears to be quite general: it holds for dispersal kernels that decrease exponentially or faster, as well as for fat-tailed dispersal kernels that decrease slower than exponential (i.e., power-law kernels).We used this approach to estimate R0 in wheat stripe rust (an important disease caused by Puccinia striiformis), where we inferred both the transmission rates and the dispersal kernels from the measurements of disease gradients. For the two largest datasets, we estimated R0 of P. striiformis in the limit of large fields to be of the order of 30. We found that the spatial extent over which R0 changes strongly is quite fine-scaled (about 30 m of the linear extension of the field). Our results indicate that in order to optimize the spatial scale of deployment of fungicides or host resistances, the adjustments should be made at a fine spatial scale. We also demonstrated how the knowledge of the spatial dependence of R0 can improve recommendations with regard to fungicide treatment.
- Subjects
PLANT diseases; PATHOGENIC microorganisms; HOST plants; PHYTOPATHOGENIC microorganisms; PUCCINIA striiformis; FUNGICIDES
- Publication
Ecological Applications, 2016, Vol 26, Issue 4, p1238
- ISSN
1051-0761
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1890/15-0807