López Pedrares, JavierVázquez Cendón, María ElenaPérez Muñuzuri, Alberto2023-05-302023-05-302023Chaos, Solitons & Fractals 170 (2023) 113344http://hdl.handle.net/10347/30623Competition of different viruses in a common strain usually results in one variant dominating over all others and eventually suppressing them, following the Principle of Competitive Exclusion. Viruses host in larger animals and they spread to others via the interactions between the hosts. In the present communication, we focus on the role played by the interacting hosts in determining the evolutionary path of a strain. Simple mathematical models are considered to model the evolution of the strain as well as to model the spread of the disease. We observe that the structure of the interactions between hosts influences the evolutionary mechanism as well as the spread of the diseaseeng© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/4.0/)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Competition modelEpidemiological modelOrdinary differential equationsVirusPandemicComplex networkjournal article10.1016/j.chaos.2023.1133440960-0779open access