Spatial features of the landscape such as habitat hotspots can profoundly influence the spread of infectious diseases [28, 29] . Our model extends previous studies focusing on transmission at the hotspot, and reveals that hotspots can also strongly alter disease transmission by generating infective contacts between animals travelling towards or from the hotspot and animals whose territories are traversed. Our results show that even when sick groups stay in their territory, hotspots may increase the size of an epidemic. When infected animals cease to visit the hotspot, groups ranging at intermediate distances to the hotspot are the most vulnerable. We also found that the epidemiological impact of hotspots extends far beyond the subset of the population that visits it; even groups having no contact with those visiting the hotspot display elevated risks of infection. Finally, our model predicts that when groups visit their nearest hotspots, the epidemiological impact of hotspots is most severe when the number of hotspots is intermediate. Hotspots impact disease transmission via a combination of both local between-neighbour and long-range traveler-resident transmissions, which is characteristic of a small-world network [30] . Disease dynamics in our model resemble those in a classic smallworld network in several aspects. First, the attack rate increases with long-distance interactions, determined by the hotspot radius of attraction (Fig. 2) . Second, new foci of infection established by long-distance traveler-resident contacts only spread when the local transmission rate, between neighbours, is sufficiently high. This phenomenon extends the influence of the hotspot beyond the radius of attraction (Fig. 4) . Finally, as in small-world networks [31] , all groups within the hotspot radius of attraction were infected almost at the same time. Thus, habitat hotspots potentially play a significant role in fuelling disease outbreaks, much like other natural mechanisms that generate small-world networks, such as the movement of vectors between plants [32, 33] .