An Eco-epidemiological system with infected predator

Epidemic is considered as one of the primary causes of species extinction, especially it also can induce populations suffering from Allee effect. Using ordinary differential equation and lattice model, we here explored the epidemic transmission in a predator-prey system. Numerical simulation indicated that the Allee effect can both destabilize and stabilize the system: a moderate Allee effect will destabilize the dynamics, but it is not true for the extreme Allee effect (weak or strong). Moreover, we have pointed out that the infection rate was key to determine the temporal transmission of disease. Through the join-count statistics method, results showed that the spatial structure of disease is influenced dramatically by the Allee effect and ecological neighborhood. These results are new to ecoepidemiology and imply a possibility of restricting disease diffusion range to control the spread of epidemics in the ecological system.