Hysteresis Effects in Social Behavior with Parasitic Infection
- PDF / 1,157,346 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 38 Downloads / 173 Views
Hysteresis Effects in Social Behavior with Parasitic Infection Michael Phillips1 Received: 14 November 2019 / Accepted: 26 May 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Recent work has found that the behavior of an individual can be altered when infected by a parasite. Here we explore the question: under what conditions, in principle, can a general parasitic infection control system-wide social behaviors? We analyze fixed points and hysteresis effects under the Master Equation, with transitions between two behaviors given two different subpopulations, healthy vs. parasitically-infected, within a population which is kept fixed overall. The key model choices are: (i) the internal opinion of infected humans may differ from that of the healthy population, (ii) the extent that interaction drives behavioral changes may also differ, and (iii) indirect interactions are most important. We find that the socioconfiguration can be controlled by the parasitically-infected population, under some conditions, even if the healthy population is the majority and of opposite opinion. Keywords Sociodynamics · Symmetry-breaking transitions · Fokker–Planck · Hysteresis
1 Introduction Parasitic organisms, those which feed upon their hosts or use the hosts to obtain resources or to reproduce, often employ behavior-altering strategies such that the behavior of the infected host benefits the parasite more than the behavior of a healthy host [6,14,21,22,25,36]. We use the term “parasite” for any organism or virus taking residence in or on a host organism and evincing such a behavior-altering property during one or more stages of its life cycle. Examples of these parasites are plentiful, ranging from viruses of the family Baculoviridae (which affect caterpillars) to the fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum (which affects ants). In particular, research within the past two decades has uncovered significant influences on the behavior of various hosts from the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii. The infection, toxoplasmosis, has an acute phase followed by a latent (dormant) phase which can remain indefinitely. The latent phase of infection has no overt symptoms but significant behavioral differences have been observed, including examples in humans ranging from the occurrence of traffic accidents to entrepreneurship [6,7,15,19,35].
Communicated by Irene Giardina.
B 1
Michael Phillips [email protected] Central New Mexico Community College, Albuquerque, NM, USA
123
M. Phillips
Extrapolating from the established behavioral changes of infected individuals, conjectures have been made about the ultimate implications for human activity and culture on a societal level [17,21,36]. While it is clear that there should be significant macroscopic behavioral effects while the infected population holds the majority, the extent of macroscopic changes due to modest infected populations has not been assessed with mathematical rigor. Specifically, it is not clear if the role of social interactions will inhibit or exacer
Data Loading...
