Infectious Disease: A Very Short Introduction

Where does disease come from? How is it transmitted from one person to another? Why are some individuals more susceptible than others? Marta Wayne and Benjamin Bolker address these questions through the lenses of ecology and evolution and illustrate why major diseases still threaten populations all over the world.

Marta Wayne, Professor of Biology, University of Florida,Benjamin Bolker, Professor of Mathematics & Statistics and Professor of Biology, McMaster University

Marta L. Wayne is an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Florida. She has studied virus evolutionary ecology in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, a model system for disease in both humans and mosquitoes.


Benjamin M. Bolker is a theoretical ecologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He has studied the dynamics of disease in organisms as diverse as humans, red grouse, gopher tortoises, and fruit flies.