Food provisioning and infection dynamics

What is it about?

This paper describes a large factorial experiment that employed food supplementation and introduction of the bacterium Bordetella bronchiseptica to show that food provisioning can markedly alter infection dynamics in rodent populations. The results demonstrate not only that food provisioning increases infection prevalence, but also disease severity, and importantly, that these outcomes translate into effects on population growth and abundance.

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Why is it important?

This paper is one of the first to provide experimental evidence that food provisioning can alter disease processes in mammalian species.