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Updated: May 19, 2026

Using a Bacterial Pathogen to Probe for Cellular and Organismic-level Host Responses
Published on: February 22, 2019
The role of host population heterogeneity in the evolution of virulence
1Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Trento, Via Sommarive 14, 38123, Povo (TN), Italy. pugliese@science.unitn.it
Abstract:
I examine here the effects of host heterogeneity in the growth of immune response on the evolution and co-evolution of virulence. The analysis is based on an extension of the 'nested model' by Gilchrist and Sasaki [Modeling host-parasite coevolution, J. Theor. Biol. 218 (2002), pp. 289-308]; the criteria for host and parasite evolution, in the paradigm of adaptive dynamics, for that model are derived in generality. Host heterogeneity is assumed to be fixed at birth according to a lognormal distribution or to the presence of two discrete types. In both cases, it is found that host heterogeneity determines a dramatic decrease in pathogen virulence, since pathogens will tune to the 'weakest' hosts. Finally we clarify how contrasting results present in the literature are due to different modelling assumptions.
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