The influence of host demography, pathogen virulence, and relationships with pathogen virulence on the evolution of pathogen transmission in a spatial context

Interspecific host competition and parasite virulence evolution

Virulence, the harm to hosts caused by parasite infection, can be selected for by several ecological factors acting synergistically or antagonistically. Here, we focus on the potential for interspecific host competition to shape virulence through such a network of effects. We first summarize how host natural mortality, body mass changes, population density and community diversity affect virulence evolution. We then introduce an initial conceptual framework highlighting how these host factors, which change during host competition, may drive virulence evolution via impacts on life-history trade-offs. We argue that the multi-faceted nature of both interspecific host competition and virulence evolution still requires consideration and experimentation to disentangle contrasting mechanisms. It also necessitates a differential treatment for parasites with various transmission strategies. However, such a comprehensive approach focusing on the role of interspecific host competition is essential to understand the processes driving the evolution of virulence in a tangled bank.

The central role of host reproduction in determining the evolution of virulence in spatially structured populations

A substantial body of work has shown that local transmission selects for less acute, 'prudent' parasites that have lower virulence and transmission rates. This is because parasite strains with higher transmission rates 'self-shade' due to a combination of genetic correlations (self: clustered related parasite strains compete for susceptible individuals) and ecological correlations (shade: infected individuals clustering and blocking transmission). However, the interaction of ecological and genetic correlations alongside higher order ecological effects such as patch extinctions means that spatial evolutionary effects can be nuanced; theory has predicted that a relatively small proportion of local infection can select for highest virulence, such that there is a humped relationship between the degree of local infection and the harm that parasites are selected to cause. Here, we examine the separate roles of the interaction scales of reproduction and infection in the context of different degrees of pathogenic castration in determining virulence evolution outcomes. Our key result is that, as long as there is significant reproduction from infected individuals, local infection always selects for lower virulence, and that the prediction that a small proportion of local infection can select for higher virulence only occurs for highly castrating pathogens. The results emphasize the importance of demography for evolutionary outcomes in spatially structured populations, but also show that the core prediction that parasites are prudent in space is reasonable for the vast majority of host-parasite interactions and mixing patterns in nature.

Environmental structure drives resistance to phages and antibiotics during phage therapy and to invading lysogens during colonisation

Microbial communities are shaped by bacteriophages through predation and lysogeny. A better understanding of the interactions between these processes across different types of environments is key to elucidate how phages mediate microbial competition and to design efficient phage therapies. We introduce an individual-based model (eVIVALDI) to investigate the role of environmental structure in the elimination of a population with a combined treatment of antibiotics and virulent phages, and in the invasion of a population of phage-sensitive bacteria by lysogens. We show that structured environments facilitate the emergence of double resistance, to antibiotics and phages, due to limited diffusion of phage particles and increased nutrient availability from dead cells. They also hinder phage amplification, thus decreasing the generation of phage genetic diversity and increasing the unpredictability of phage-bacteria arms-races. We used a machine learning approach to determine the variables most important for the invasion of sensitive populations by lysogens. They revealed that phage-associated traits and environmental structure are the key drivers of the process. Structured environments hinder invasions, and accounting for their existence improves the fit of the model to published in vivo experimental data. Our results underline environmental structure as key to understand in vivo phage-bacteria interactions.

Predicting global variation in infectious disease severity: A bottom-up approach

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Understanding the underlying causes for the variation in case-fatality-ratios (CFR) is important for assessing the mechanism governing global disparity in the burden of infectious diseases. Variation in CFR is likely to be driven by factors such as population genetics, demography, transmission patterns and general health status. We present data here that support the hypothsis that changes in CFRs for specific diseases may be the result of serial passage through different hosts. For example passage through adults may lead to lower CFR, whereas passage through children may have the opposite effect. Accordingly changes in CFR may occur in parallel with demographic transitions.

METHODOLOGY

We explored the predictability of CFR using data obtained from the World Health Organization (WHO) disease databases for four human diseases: mumps, malaria, tuberculosis and leptospirosis and assessed these for association with a range of population characteristics, such as crude birth and death rates, median age of the population, mean body mass index, proportion living in urban areas and tuberculosis vaccine coverage. We then tested this predictive model on Danish historical demographic and population data.

RESULTS

Birth rates were the best predictor for mumps and malaria CFR. For tuberculosis CFR death rates were the best predictor and for leptospirosis population density was a significant predictor.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

CFR predictors differed among diseases according to their biology. We suggest that the overall result reflects an interaction between the forces driving demographic change and the virulence of human-to-human transmitted diseases.

The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests

Why is it that some parasites cause high levels of host damage (i.e. virulence) whereas others are relatively benign? There are now numerous reviews of virulence evolution in the literature but it is nevertheless still difficult to find a comprehensive treatment of the theory and data on the subject that is easily accessible to non-specialists. Here we attempt to do so by distilling the vast theoretical literature on the topic into a set of relatively few robust predictions. We then provide a comprehensive assessment of the available empirical literature that tests these predictions. Our results show that there have been some notable successes in integrating theory and data but also that theory and empiricism in this field do not ‘speak’ to each other very well. We offer a few suggestions for how the connection between the two might be improved.

Predator attack rate evolution in space: the role of ecology mediated by complex emergent spatial structure and self-shading

Predation interactions are an important element of ecological communities. Population spatial structure has been shown to influence predator evolution, resulting in the evolution of a reduced predator attack rate; however, the evolutionary role of traits governing predator and prey ecology is unknown. The evolutionary effect of spatial structure on a predator's attack rate has primarily been explored assuming a fixed metapopulation spatial structure, and understood in terms of group selection. But endogenously generated, emergent spatial structure is common in nature. Furthermore, the evolutionary influence of ecological traits may be mediated through the spatial self-structuring process. Drawing from theory on pathogens, the evolutionary effect of emergent spatial structure can be understood in terms of self-shading, where a voracious predator limits its long-term invasion potential by reducing local prey availability. Here we formalize the effects of self-shading for predators using spatial moment equations. Then, through simulations, we show that in a spatial context self-shading leads to relationships between predator-prey ecology and the predator's attack rate that are not expected in a non-spatial context. Some relationships are analogous to relationships already shown for host-pathogen interactions, but others represent new trait dimensions. Finally, since understanding the effects of ecology using existing self-shading theory requires simplifications of the emergent spatial structure that do not apply well here, we also develop metrics describing the complex spatial structure of the predator and prey populations to help us explain the evolutionary effect of predator and prey ecology in the context of self-shading. The identification of these metrics may provide a step towards expansion of the predictive domain of self-shading theory to more complex spatial dynamics.