Anthropogenic Environmental Change and Emerging Infectious Disease: A Proximate-Determinants Approach

James H. Jones, Stanford University
William H. Durham, Stanford University

While there are innumerable pathways between human agency and disease emergence, all these paths must pass through a finite number of proximate determinants. Using the combined formalism of mathematical epidemiology and theoretical community ecology, we present an analysis of these proximate determinants and discuss how both intrinsic population features (e.g., mortality and fertility, age-structure, population growth or decline) and behavioral features (e.g., consumer preferences, consumption patterns, environmental policy) contribute to disease emergence. Disease emergence is essentially a problem in invasive-species ecology. Population growth (and the size of populations) plays a role in community dynamics associated with successful invasion. However, other factors such as interaction strength in the community matrix, play roles at least as important as the population growth of any given species in the community. Two dimensions of proximate determinants are particularly salient: (1) the identity of the invading species (i.e., humans, pathogen, vector); and (2) the evolutionary status of the pathogen.