How cultural innovations trigger the emergence of new pathogens

Pooladvand, Pantea; Kendal, Jeremy; Tanaka, Mark

Abstract

Cultural practices perceived to be adaptive-from clearing land for food production to medical innovations-can disseminate quickly through human populations. However, these same practices often have unintended maladaptive effects. A particularly consequential effect is the emergence of diseases. In numerous instances, a cultural change is followed by the appearance of a new pathogen. Here, we develop mathematical models to analyze the population processes through which cultural evolution precipitates the emergence of a new disease. We find that when a risk-bearing cultural practice spreads, emergence can be an unavoidable cost even if a safer alternative practice eventually evolves from the original. Social learning and a fitness advantage associated with the evolving practice drive early disease emergence but the two factors have distinct effects on the time to mutation of the pathogen and significant stochastic variation is observed. For example, a disease can take longer to emerge in a population that adopts the risk-bearing practice quickly than in a population that is slow to transition. Extending the model to explore the effects of an alternative practice evolving from the original, we find a nonmonotonic relationship between relative risk of the two practices and the median time to disease emergence. Our findings contribute to understanding how cultural evolution can shape pathogen evolution and highlight the unpredictability of disease emergence.

Citation

Pooladvand, P., Kendal, J., & Tanaka, M. (2024). How cultural innovations trigger the emergence of new pathogens. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(48), Article e2322882121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2322882121

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 14, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Nov 18, 2024
• Publication Date: Nov 18, 2024
• Deposit Date: Oct 4, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 18, 2024
• Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Print ISSN: 0027-8424
• Electronic ISSN: 1091-6490
• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 121
• Issue: 48
• Article Number: e2322882121
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2322882121
• Keywords: Models, Theoretical, pathogen emergence, stochastic model, infectious disease, cultural evolution, Communicable Diseases, Emerging - transmission, Humans, Cultural Evolution, mathematical model
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2944967