Playing by different rules: the evolution of virulence in sterilizing pathogens
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Monitoring Intraspecies Competition in a Bacterial Cell Population by Cocultivation of Fluorescently Labelled Strains
Published on: January 18, 2014
Kara J O'Keefe1, Janis Antonovics
1Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA.
Abstract:
We investigate the evolution of virulence of pathogens that reduce their hosts' fitness primarily by affecting host fecundity. We show that, under many conditions, such sterilizing pathogens evolve high rather than intermediate levels of virulence, and this pushes the pathogen population and sometimes the host population toward extinction. We also show that spatial population structure can reverse this evolutionary result and allow the persistence of intermediate-virulence pathogens. Thus, spatial population structure may be vital to the persistence of sterilizing pathogens in nature.
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