Year: 2022

GROW SLOWER AND PERSIST. "Because pathogens compete for a common resource (the host population), the same process may select for extreme exploitation strategies. Yet, two main ecological factors can alter this evolutionary outcome and promote the evolution of less aggressive exploitation strategies." https://lnkd.in/dvcWSUt View in LinkedIn

SOFTER GENTLER STRATEGY. "First, epidemic spread reduces the density of susceptible hosts and can feed back on the selective pressure that favours intermediate exploitation strategies." https://lnkd.in/dvcWSUt View in LinkedIn

NATURAL BRAKES. "Decreased availability of susceptible hosts weakens selection for higher transmission rates. Ultimately, this may select for intermediate evolutionarily stable strategies, balancing the benefit (transmission) and the cost (virulence: induced host mortality) of host exploitation." https://lnkd.in/dvcWSUt View in LinkedIn

LIFE CYCLE OF INFECTION. "We recently tested this idea using the bacteriophage λ in experimental epidemics spreading through well-mixed environments. We confirmed that more virulent strains are indeed selected for during early epidemics, when uninfected hosts are abundant, but also that natural selection favours latent strains of the virus as disease prevalence increases." https://lnkd.in/dvcWSUt View in LinkedIn

PROXIMITY. "Localized transmission often favours more prudent host exploitation strategies. Indeed, when epidemics are spatially structured, extreme strategies of host exploitation may lead to the over-exploitation of the local host supply and therefore fail to invade." https://lnkd.in/dvcWSUt View in LinkedIn

PATHOGEN VIRILITY DRIVER. "The intensity of local competition for susceptible hosts depends, however, on the precise genetic and epidemiological structure of the pathogen population." https://lnkd.in/dvcWSUt View in LinkedIn

HORIZONTALITY AND PROXIMITY. "The effect of spatial structure on the evolution of pathogens has had some experimental support which is, however, based on experiments with obligate killing and strictly horizontally transmitting pathogens." https://lnkd.in/dvcWSUt View in LinkedIn

SLOWING VIRULENCE. "During an epidemic, disease prevalence increases, and the opportunities to find uninfected hosts dwindle. This may select for prudent exploitation of the remaining host population. In a previous study, we demonstrated the impact of such epidemiological feedback on the evolution of bacteriophage λ." https://lnkd.in/dvcWSUt View in LinkedIn

TIMECOURSE OF INFECTION. "Our central result is that the fitness of a virulent strain relative to a more prudent strain decreases as the environment becomes increasingly structured." https://lnkd.in/dvcWSUt View in LinkedIn

FREQUENT NOVELTY. "The evolution of influenza, a segmented single-stranded RNA orthomyxovirus, is punctuated by frequent reassortment." http://www.pnas.org/content/110/46/18566.full View in LinkedIn