Large Structures Seminar: Elina Numminen

The ecology and evolution of any pathogen is driven by the availability and dynamics of its host. For instance the surrounding landscape, and how it creates transmission barriers and highways can critically constrain the epidemiological dynamics. In my presentation, I will present analyses on a densely sampled longitudinal genomic dataset in order to assess the features driving spatio-temporal diversity and transmission dynamics of an obligate fungal plant pathogen, Podosphaera plantaginis in the Åland archipelago, the natural patchy metapopulation it occurs in. I utilize modern statistical inference techniques and mathematical graph theory to assess how different landscape features, especially roads impact the spread of this wind-dispersing pathogen and how this results in what seems at first as cryptic patterns of pathogen diversity. Our results show a prime example of analysing epidemics with the help of network concepts, an approach which often is tempting, yet inplausible due to lack of knowledge on the transmission network.