The effects of disease dispersal and host clustering on the epidemic threshold in plants

For an epidemic to occur in a closed population, the transmission rate must be above a threshold level. In plant populations, the threshold depends not only on host density, but on the distribution of hosts in space. This paper presents an alternative analysis of a previously presented stochastic model for an epidemic in continuous space (Bolker, 1999, Bull. Math. Biol. 61, 849–874). A variety of moment closures are investigated to determine …