Host specialisation, immune cross-reaction and the composition of communities of co-circulating \textit{Borrelia} strains (Q2035769)

This paper studies host specialization, immune cross-reaction and the composition of communities of co-circulating \textit{Borrelia} strains. Two hypotheses are underlying the proposed mathematical model. The first is the hypothesis that multiple niche polymorphism shapes \textit{Borrelia burgdorferi} strain communities. The second is that negative frequency dependence shapes \textit{B. burgdorferi} strain communities. The model integrates host specialization and immune cross-protection into an eco-epidemiological framework for \textit{Borrelia} transmission, where an additional dimension by antigenic differentiation to evade adaptive immunity is incorporated. The well-mixed epidemic model include two host species, mouse and birds, and multiple co-circulating pathogen strains. The paper derives the basic reproduction number for the model and studies the characteristics of stable strain communities for some cases. Numerical results are also provided.