Consumer-resource coexistence as a means of reducing infectious disease

ABSTRACT Maintaining sustainable ecosystems are important for all the inhabitants of earth. Also, an important component of sustainable ecosystems is the maintenance of healthy coexistence of consumers and their resources which can include diseases in the species involved. We formulate a model, where the resources are plants, to explore how consumer-resource coexistence could of itself limit the spread of infectious diseases. The important mathematical features of the model are discussed using the basic reproduction number and the consumption number. The results show an association between species coexistence and a decrease in ecosystem resource disease. The possible importance of these results are discussed