Lab 6: Disease Ecology

Question 1

What are the three requirements needed for infection to occur that are mentioned in the disease triangle?

Answer 1

Pathogen
Conductive Environment
Susceptible host

Question 2

How does disease population ecology differ from standard population ecology?

Answer 2

Because pathogen population size will be affected by factors within the host as well as factors affecting how they move between hosts

Question 3

What are some factors within a host that affect the size of the disease population?

Answer 3

Availability of resources required for growth
Competition for those resources with other diseases
Hosts own immune response

Question 4

When diseases are transferred from human to human, their distribution and rate of infection can be described by their…

Answer 4

Life history
Pathogenicity
Transmission rate
Host density

Question 5

What are two possible scenarios through which a relationship between two variables can arise?

Answer 5

1. Both variables respond to an underlying common cause (not not directly causative)
2. One variable causes direct changes in the other variable (cause and effect)

Question 6

When do we use a linear regression?

Answer 6

When we suspect a CAUSE AND EFFECT RELATIONSHIP exists between two variables

Question 7

How does a linear regression work?

Answer 7

Works by trying to draw a straight line that minimizes the distance of each data point to that line (line of best fit). Also explained by the relationship of x on variable y. Or the amount of variation in Y that can be explained by variation in X
R2 is the measure of the strength of the relationship. If it is close to 1 it indicates that the data points fit close to the line
Reliability is determined by the p-value, or the probability of getting this result if the null hypothesis is true