Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Host phenology can drive the evolution of intermediate virulence strategies in some obligate-killer parasites

View ORCID ProfileHannelore MacDonald, View ORCID ProfileErol Akçay, View ORCID ProfileDustin Brisson
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.13.435259
Hannelore MacDonald
1Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania – Philadelphia, PA, United States
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Hannelore MacDonald
  • For correspondence: haime@sas.upenn.edu
Erol Akçay
1Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania – Philadelphia, PA, United States
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Erol Akçay
Dustin Brisson
1Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania – Philadelphia, PA, United States
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Dustin Brisson
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

The traditional mechanistic trade-offs resulting in a negative correlation between transmission and virulence are the foundation of nearly all current theory on the evolution of parasite virulence. Several ecological factors have been shown to modulate the optimal virulence strategies predicted from mechanistic trade-off models, but these ecological factors have not yet been shown to be sufficient to explain the intermediate virulence strategies observed in any natural system. The timing of seasonal activity, or phenology, is a common factor that influences the types and impact of many ecological interactions but is difficult to incorporate into virulence evolution studies. We develop a mathematical model of a disease system with seasonal host activity to study the evolutionary consequences of host phenology on the virulence of obligate-killer parasite. Results from this model demonstrated that seasonal host activity is sufficient to drive the evolution of intermediate parasite virulence in some types of natural disease systems, even when a traditional mechanistic trade-off between transmission and virulence is not assumed in the modeling framework. The optimal virulence strategy in these systems can be determined by both the duration of the host activity period as well as the variation in the host emergence timing. Parasites with low virulence strategies are favored in environments with long host activity periods and in environments in which hosts emerge synchronously. The results demonstrate that host phenology can be sufficient to select for intermediate optimal virulence strategies, providing an alternative mechanism to account for virulence evolution in some natural systems.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Cite as: MacDonald H, Akçay E, Brisson D (2021) Host phenology can drive the evolution of intermediate virulence strategies in some obligate-killer parasites. bioRxiv, 2021.03.13.435259, ver. 8 peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.13.435259.

  • This article has been peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community In Evolutionary Biology (https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.evolbiol.100129)

  • Version 8 of this preprint has been peer-reviewed and recommended by Peer Community In Evolutionary Biology (https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.evolbiol.100129)

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted July 13, 2021.
Download PDF
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Host phenology can drive the evolution of intermediate virulence strategies in some obligate-killer parasites
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Host phenology can drive the evolution of intermediate virulence strategies in some obligate-killer parasites
Hannelore MacDonald, Erol Akçay, Dustin Brisson
bioRxiv 2021.03.13.435259; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.13.435259
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Host phenology can drive the evolution of intermediate virulence strategies in some obligate-killer parasites
Hannelore MacDonald, Erol Akçay, Dustin Brisson
bioRxiv 2021.03.13.435259; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.13.435259

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Evolutionary Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (3698)
  • Biochemistry (7809)
  • Bioengineering (5689)
  • Bioinformatics (21330)
  • Biophysics (10595)
  • Cancer Biology (8199)
  • Cell Biology (11961)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (6777)
  • Ecology (10419)
  • Epidemiology (2065)
  • Evolutionary Biology (13900)
  • Genetics (9726)
  • Genomics (13094)
  • Immunology (8164)
  • Microbiology (20058)
  • Molecular Biology (7871)
  • Neuroscience (43147)
  • Paleontology (321)
  • Pathology (1280)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2264)
  • Physiology (3362)
  • Plant Biology (7246)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1315)
  • Synthetic Biology (2010)
  • Systems Biology (5547)
  • Zoology (1132)