What makes or breaks a campaign to stop an invading plant pathogen?

Milne, AE; Gottwald, T; Parnell, SR; Alonso Chavez, V; van den Bosch, F

Abstract

Diseases in humans, animals and plants remain an important challenge in our society. Effective control of invasive pathogens often requires coordinated concerted action of a large group of stakeholders. Both epidemiological and human behavioural factors influence the outcome of a disease control campaign. In mathematical models that are frequently used to guide such campaigns, human behaviour is often ill-represented, if at all. Existing models of human, animal and plant disease that do incorporate participation or compliance are often driven by pay-offs or direct observations of the disease state. It is however very well known that opinion is an important driving factor of human decision making. Here we consider the case study of Citrus Huanglongbing disease (HLB), which is an acute bacterial disease that threatens the sustainability of citrus production across the world. We show how by coupling an epidemiological model of this invasive disease with an opinion dynamics model we are able to answer the question: What makes or breaks the effectiveness of a disease control campaign? Frequent contact between stakeholders and advisors is shown to increase the probability of successful control. More surprisingly, we show that informing stakeholders about the effectiveness of control methods is of much greater importance than prematurely increasing their perceptions of the risk of infection. We discuss the overarching consequences of this finding and the effect on human as well as plant disease epidemics.

Citation

Milne, A., Gottwald, T., Parnell, S., Alonso Chavez, V., & van den Bosch, F. (2020). What makes or breaks a campaign to stop an invading plant pathogen?. PLoS Computational Biology, 16(2), e1007570. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007570

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 26, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Feb 6, 2020
• Publication Date: Feb 6, 2020
• Deposit Date: Feb 7, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 7, 2020
• Journal: PLOS Computational Biology
• Print ISSN: 1553-734X
• Electronic ISSN: 1553-7358
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 2
• Pages: e1007570
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007570
• Keywords: Research Article, Medicine and health sciences, Biology and life sciences, Social sciences
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007570
• Related Public URLs: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/
• Additional Information: Additional Information : ** From PLOS via Jisc Publications Router ** Licence for this article: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ **Journal IDs: pissn 1553-734X; eissn 1553-7358 **Article IDs: publisher-id: pcompbiol-d-19-00642 **History: published_online 06-02-2020; collection 02-2020; accepted 26-11-2019; submitted 25-04-2019 **License for this article: , https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/; Funders : United States Department of Agricultre Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS);Biotechnology and Biosciences Sciences Research Council (BBSRC);Natural Environment Research Council (NERC);BBSRC; Projects : Minimizing socio-political impacts to maximize cost-effective control of emerging plant pests;Delivering Sustainable Systems;Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Systems;Smart Crop Protection (SCP) strategic programme;“Soils to Nutrition” (S2N); Grant Number: 15-8130-0592-CA; Grant Number: BB/J/00426x/1; Grant Number: NEC05829 LTS-M ASSIST; Grant Number: BBS/OS/CP/000001; Grant Number: BBS/E/C/000I0330