Disease in the fortress: Social insects as a model system for disease dynamics

How do local heterogeneities impact disease dynamics across an entire system? Linking disease dynamics across scales remains a major imperative for disease ecology research. Social insects, which can be experimentally manipulated and infected, provide a tractable model system for investigating how heterogeneities across scales integrate to impact disease dynamics from the individual to the entire colony. I will highlight the capabilities of using social insects and some open questions in disease ecology they can aid in solving.