Silene alba, a flowering plant found along roadsides, can become infected with a parasitic disease, caused by a fungus. In addition to rendering the plants sterile, this disease causes both male and female plants to produce flowers with anther sacs filled with spores of the fungus. The insects which pollinate healthy Silene alba also visit diseased flowers, thus acting as vectors of this disease. This study attempts to show how the behavior of the insect pollinator/vector influences the plant-pathogen interaction between Silene alba and the fungus by using an approach which combines field observations, experimentation, and mathematical modeling. No studies of plant-vector-pathogen interactions have included the behavioral component of the vector in modeling the dynamics of the system. This study in which the disease vector is also the pollinator of the plant is an ideal place to begin an investigation of how vector behavior affects a plant-pathogen interaction. The voluminous literature on the effect of pollinator behavior on plant population dynamics can be drawn upon to develop models in this plant-pollinator/vector-pathogen interaction. The results of this study will be of interest to epidemioligists working in plant-vector-pathogen systems as well as to evolutionary ecologists working on the effects of individual behavior on population and community dynamics.
