ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the readers to: correctly use basic epidemiology terms in discussing biocultural diversity, characterize the human immune system's role in the body-environment relationship, use the disease ecology perspective to explain how the agricultural lifestyle contributed to the spread of infectious diseases and characterize ways in which local ecologies contribute to population diversity in vulnerability to certain diseases. In some sense, our very sociality is our downfall when it comes to infectious disease. We human beings have an evolved ability to protect ourselves from the intrusion of unwanted visitors through our immune systems. Disease ecology focuses on the germ, the environment in which it lives, and the way in which it makes the most of its particular niche or habitat. The chapter examines the relationship between settlement, related patterns of sociality, and the spreador not of epidemic disease in various populations.
