[ad_1]
Researchers have found that sick vampire bats spend less time around others in their community, slowing down how quickly a disease spreads.
According to the study, published in ‘Behavioral Ecology’, as a pathogen spreads through a population, changes in social behavior can alter the way the disease spreads.
“Transmission rates can increase when parasites change host behavior or decrease when healthy individuals avoid sick ones. In certain social insects, sick people can voluntarily isolate themselves or be excluded by their colony mates,” the authors said. Oxford University Press study in the UK. .
“A simpler mechanism causing reduced transmission is that infected animals often display unhealthy behavior, including increased lethargy and sleep, and reduced movement and sociability,” they wrote.
This disease-induced social distancing does not require the cooperation of others and is likely common in all species.
Here, the researchers conducted a field experiment to investigate how disease behavior affects relationships over time using a dynamic social network created from high-resolution proximity data.
After capturing 31 adult female vampire bats from a chicken coop inside a hollow tree, the researchers simulated “sick” bats by injecting a random half of the bats with the immune-defying substance, lipopolysaccharide, while the control group received injections. of saline solution.
Over the next three days, the researchers glued proximity sensors to the bats, returned them to their hollow tree, and tracked changes over time in the associations between the 16 “sick” bats and the 15 control bats under natural conditions. .
Compared to control bats, “sick” bats associated with fewer group mates, spent less time with others, and were less socially connected with healthy group mates when considering direct and indirect connections.
During the six-hour treatment period, a “sick” bat was associated on average with four fewer associates than a control bat.
A control bat had, on average, a 49 percent chance of associating with each control bat, but only a 35 percent chance of associating with each “sick” bat.
During the treatment period, the “sick” bats spent 25 minutes less associating per pair. These differences decreased after the treatment period and when the bats slept or foraged for food outside the roost.
“The sensors gave us an amazing new window on how the social behavior of these bats changed from hour to hour and even minute to minute during the course of day and night, even while they were hiding in the darkness of a hollow tree.” the authors wrote.
