Infectious disease transmission and behavioral allometry in wild mammals

1. Animal social and movement behaviors can impact the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases, especially for pathogens transmitted through close contact between hosts or through contact with infectious stages in the environment. 2. Estimating pathogen transmission rates and R0 from natural systems can be challenging. Because host behavioral traits that underlie the transmission process vary predictably with body size, one of the best-studied traits among animals, body size might therefore also predict variation in parasite transmission dynamics. 3. Here, we examine how two host behaviors, social group living and the intensity of habitat use, scale allometrically using comparative data from wild primate, carnivore and ungulate species. We use these empirical relationships to parameterize classical compartment models for infectious micro- and macroparasitic diseases, and examine how the risk of pathogen invasion changes as a function of host behavior and body size. We then test mod...