ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Antagonistic coevolution The costs of parasitism lead to antagonistic coevolution between hosts and parasites. Hosts can evolve resistance (typically by closing the compatibility filter) or tolerance (focusing on resistance this week). Stahl et al. (1999): Arms races in a disease-resistance locu...

Parasites can have large effects on their host populations and communities; can determine the competitive balance between two species, whether one species can invade or coexist with another; change the flow of energy through and relative balance of different trophic levels; act as “ecosystem e...

Host populations So far we have been talking about the population dynamics of the pathogens themselves; now we’ll discuss how parasites affect the population dynamics of their hosts, whether wildlife (animal or plant) or human. Regulation Do parasites control population size? How? High infect...

Basics Group individuals into categories; figure out the rates at which various events (infection, recovery, death, etc.) occur, and how they move individuals between categories/change the population sizes; write down equations based on these rates. “All models are wrong but some are useful” ...

Fungal disease has emerged as an increasing threat to a number of different organisms, especially amphibian species. Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Figure 1), a Chytridiomycota fungus that causes the infectious disease chytridiomycosis has been found to be the major cause of amphibian death caused ...

ecology “the study of the processes determining the distribution and abundance of organisms” (Krebs) or of “the interaction among organisms and between organisms and their environment” (Poulin) In infectious disease (ID) context: incidence (number of new infections per unit time) and prev...