Dynamic behavior of a parasite-host model with general incidence (Q879142)

In studying the dynamics of a microparasite model with standard mass action incidence (\(S\) are the susceptibles and \(I\) are the infectives) it was found that the extinction of both host and parasite models occurs only due to stochastic perturbation. An alternative result was obtained in case of ratio dependent incidence \((SI/(S+I))\), i.e., it was found that the extinction of both host and parasite models occurs without stochastic perturbation. This paper studies the interpolating case \((SI/[(S+I)^{(1-a)}]\), \(0\leq a\leq 1\). The authers find that the extinction of both host and parasite models occur without stochastic perturbation only for \(a=0\). The biolgical meaning of this result is discussed.