Fig. 1. A conceptual diagram illustrating an “ecological
hierarchy”. Hierarchical ecological information, defined by the grey
outlines (spanning from a single pathogen to a host assemblage) may
contribute to a whole-system model of disease flow within a
host-pathogen system. As the time since an initial infection increases
on the y-axis, transmission events may also increase, and the budget of
susceptible organisms represented on the x-axis that could be exposed to
infection, increase. The ecological scale shown constitutes
both the structures and processes acting throughout an ecosystem.
Consequently, scale can be parameterised by system dynamics, such as
host or population behaviour(s) or group demographic processes, which
describe expected fluctuations around ecological equilibria . Coloured
polygons therefore propose example locations for these latent dynamics
in the context of a “whole-system” model.