About the talk

Infectious diseases are an increasing threat to biodiversity and human health. Developing a thorough understanding of the factors driving host-pathogen dynamics is therefore essential in both ecological and epidemiological research. Disease dynamics are fundamentally shaped by host-pathogen interactions at various spatial and temporal scales. Individual decision-making processes, especially movement choices as adaptive responses to environmental changes, play a central role in disease transmission. Accordingly, simulation models that aim to predict realistic host-pathogen dynamics must account for individual behaviours and life-history traits of host organisms. Individual- or agent-based models, which capture the variability in host behaviours, offer new approaches and insights into the study of disease dynamics.

About the speaker

Tobias Kürschner did his PhD at the Leibniz Institute of Zoo- and Wildlife research (Berlin, Germany), studying the effects of global change, dynamic resource landscapes and individual movement on the spread and evolution of classical swine fever on wild boars. Afterwards, he joined the Bavarian forest national park as a postdoc researchers, where he focuses on pathogen spread on vertebrates, such as liver fluke in deer and African swine fever in wild boar.