Meeting Abstract
Provisioning of abundant food resources in urbanized landscapes can have profound effects on wildlife ecology, with important implications for pathogen transmission. While empirical studies have quantified the effects of accidental provisioning activities and supplemental feeding on host behavior and immune function, the net interactive effect of these components on host–pathogen dynamics is unknown. We use simple compartmental models parameterized with data from feral cat populations subject to varying levels of supplemental feeding and infection with feline leukemia virus to investigate how resource-induced changes to host demography, contact behavior, and immune defense influence pathogen invasion and persistence. Our simulations show that pathogen invasion success and long-term prevalence depend critically on how strongly supplemental feeding affects host resistance to infection and that moderate levels of these resource additions can lead to drastically different outcomes of pathogen extinction or maximizing prevalence far above levels of disease in unsupplemented populations. These results highlight the need for further empirical studies, particularly field experiments quantifying immune defense, to fully understand how supplemental feeding and other human-provided resources affect pathogen transmission in urbanized environments.
