Ecological importance of small mammals as reservoirs of disease

Abstract

Disease is a state in which an individual’s activities are reduced to levels below the normal day to day fluctuations and is a concept easier to understand than to define. Diseases are divided, for convenience, into two major categories, those that cannot be transmitted from one individual to another and those that can. The former include such diseases as those of physiological or psychological disfunction while the latter embrace most of the better known diseases of man and his domesticated animals. Diseases which can be passed from one individual to another are known as infectious, transmissible or communicable diseases and are caused by infectious agents. Transmission can be brought about by direct contact or through the agency of some intermediary, usually an insect.