Question

Imagine you are studying a wild animal population (free-living) and you need to figure out if a particular pathogen has an impact on that population, that is a long-term impact that ultimately will limit or regulate the population. This can happen through limiting host reproduction, host survival, and/or carrying capacity of the population.

1. How would you measure/assess if a pathogen is affecting host reproductive success?

2. How would you measure/assess if a pathogen is affecting host survival (in the cases in which it does not outright kill the host?)

3. How do measure if the presence of the pathogen in the population is limiting how big the population can get?

4. What are some of the challenges associated with answering those questions? What limits the ability to do this?

Answer 1

Answer :)

To measure the three aspects of the study: host reproduction, carrying capacity, and/or host survival, we need to perform a broad population-based study. In this study, make two separate groups of animals. The first group will include the normal animals who are not infected while the other group includes infected animals. The first generation of each group will tell about the three measures of the test. If host reproduction is limited, then there will be no production will occur in between some couples. If there is an impact on host survival, then some animals would die due to the infection. And, if it is affecting carrying capacity, then animals will produce less offspring than normal animals.

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