The impact of resource abundance on consumer encounter rates (with an application to pathogen invasion risk)

Territorial animals share a variety of common resources, which can be a major driver of conspecific encounter rates. We investigate how changes in resource quantity influence the rate of encounters between individuals in a population.  A spatial resource landscape is implemented to estimate changes in encounter rates.  Using simulations and asymptotic analysis we show that the relationship between resource availability and consumer encounter rate is non-montonic.  Interestingly, we also find that the maximum distance at which consumers are able to detect resources greatly influences the expected consumer encounter rate. We will discuss these theoretical results in the context of a jackal population which has access to a seasonally varying number of carcasses and their subsequent vulnerability to rabies virus outbreaks.