Converging seasonal prevalence dynamics in experimental epidemics

QTL mapping of a natural genetic polymorphism for long-term parasite persistence in Daphnia populations

Knowing the determinants of the geographic ranges of parasites is important for understanding their evolutionary ecology, epidemiology and their potential to expand their range. Here we explore the determinants of geographic range in the peculiar case of a parasite species – the microsporidian Hamiltosporidium tvaerminnensis – that has a limited geographic distribution in a wide-spread host – Daphnia magna. We conducted a quantitative trait loci (QTLs) analysis with monoclonal F2D. magna populations originating from a cross between a susceptible northern European genotype and a resistant central European genotype. Contrary to our expectations, long-term persistence turned out to be a quantitative trait across the F2 offspring. Evidence for two QTLs, one epistatic interaction and for further minor QTL was found. This finding contrasts markedly with the previously described bimodal pattern for long-term parasite persistence in natural host genotypes across Europe and leaves open the question of how a quantitative genetic trait could determine the disjunct geographic distribution of the parasite across Europe.

Host age modulates parasite infectivity, virulence and reproduction

Host age is one of the most striking differences among hosts within most populations, but there is very little data on how age-dependent effects impact ecological and evolutionary dynamics of both the host and the parasite. Here, we examined the influence of host age (juveniles, young and old adults) at parasite exposure on host susceptibility, fecundity and survival as well as parasite transmission, using two clones of the water flea Daphnia magna and two clones of its bacterial parasite Pasteuria ramosa. Younger D. magna were more susceptible to infection than older ones, regardless of host or parasite clone. Also, younger-infected D. magna became castrated faster than older hosts, but host and parasite clone effects contributed to this trait as well. Furthermore, the early-infected D. magna produced considerably more parasite transmission stages than late-infected ones, while host age at exposure did not affect virulence as it is defined in models (host mortality). When virulence is defined more broadly as the negative effects of infection on host fitness, by integrating the parasitic effects on host fecundity and mortality, then host age at exposure seems to slide along a negative relationship between host and parasite fitness. Thus, the virulence-transmission trade-off differs strongly among age classes, which in turn affects predictions of optimal virulence. Age-dependent effects on host susceptibility, virulence and parasite transmission could pose an important challenge for experimental and theoretical studies of infectious disease dynamics and disease ecology. Our results present a call for a more explicit stage-structured theory for disease, which will incorporate age-dependent epidemiological parameters.

Phosphorus limitation enhances parasite impact: feedback effects at the population level

Background

Nutrient deficiency affects the growth and population dynamics of consumers. Endoparasites can be seen as consumers that drain carbon (C) or energy from their host while simultaneously competing for limiting resources such as phosphorus (P). Depending on the relative demands of the host and the parasite for the limiting nutrient, intensified resource competition under nutrient limitation can either reduce the parasite’s effect on the host or further reduce the fitness of the nutrient-limited host. So far, knowledge of how nutrient limitation affects parasite performance at the host population level and how this affects the host populations is limited.

Results

We followed the population growth of Daphnia magna that were uninfected or experimentally infected with a microsporidian, Glugoides intestinalis. The Daphnia were fed either P-sufficient or P-limited algae. The P-limited diet decreased the population density and biomass compared with the populations fed with the P-sufficient algae. In the P-sufficient populations, infection with the parasite reduced the population density but not the biomass of Daphnia, while in the P-limited populations, both the density and biomass of Daphnia decreased toward the end of the 32 day experiment compared with the uninfected controls. The infected animals from the P-limited populations had higher parasite spore cluster counts, while, in a separate experiment, host diet quality did not affect the number of parasites in individually kept Daphnia.

Conclusions

Because host diet quality did not affect parasite numbers at the individual level, we suggest that the higher parasite load in the P-limited populations is a result of feedback effects arising at the population level. Because of the density-dependent transmission of the parasite and the time lag between exposure and transmission, the lower host population density in the P-limited populations led to a higher spore:host ratio. This effect may have been further reinforced by decreases in filtration rates caused by crowding in the P-sufficient populations and/or increases in filtration rates as a response to poor food quality in the P-limited populations. The increases in exposure led to a higher parasite load and aggravated the negative effects of parasite infection at the population level.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12898-014-0029-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The expression of virulence for a mixed-mode transmitted parasite in a diapausing host

Many parasites survive harsh periods together with their hosts. Without the possibility of horizontal transmission during host diapause, parasite persistence depends entirely on host survival. We therefore hypothesize that a parasite should be avirulent during its host's diapausing stage. In contrast, the parasite may express higher virulence, i.e. parasite-induced fitness reduction of the host, during host life stages with good opportunities for horizontal transmission. Here we study the effects of a vertically and horizontally transmitted microsporidium parasite, Hamiltosporidium tvaerminnensis, on the quantity and survival of resting eggs of its host Daphnia magna. We find that the parasite did not affect egg volume, hatching success and time to hatching of the Daphnia's resting eggs, although it did strongly reduce the number of resting eggs produced by infected females, revealing high virulence during the non-diapause phase of the host's life cycle. These results also explain another aspect of this system - namely the strong decline in natural population prevalence across diapause. This decline is not caused by mortality in infected resting stages, as was previously hypothesized, but because infected female hosts produce lower rates of resting eggs. Together, these results help explain the epidemiological dynamics of a microsporidian disease and highlight the adaptive nature of life stage-dependent parasite virulence.

Microsatellite and single-nucleotide polymorphisms indicate recurrent transitions to asexuality in a microsporidian parasite

Assessing the mode of reproduction of microparasites remains a difficult task because direct evidence for sexual processes is often absent and the biological covariates of sex and asex are poorly known. Species with geographically divergent modes of reproduction offer the possibility to explore some of these covariates, for example, the influence of life-history traits, mode of transmission and life-cycle complexity. Here, we present a phylogeographical study of a microsporidian parasite, which allows us to relate population genetic structure and mode of reproduction to its geographically diverged life histories. We show that in microsporidians from the genus Hamiltosporidium, that use the cladoceran Daphnia as host, an epidemic population structure has evolved, most probably since the last Ice Age. We partially sequenced three housekeeping genes (alpha tubulin, beta tubulin and hsp70) and genotyped seven microsatellite loci in 51 Hamiltosporidium isolates sampled within Europe and the Middle East. We found two phylogenetically related asexual parasite lines, one each from Fennoscandia and Israel, which share the unique ability of being transmitted both vertically and horizontally from Daphnia to Daphnia. The sexual forms cannot transmit horizontally among Daphnia, but presumably have a complex life cycle with a second host species. In spite of the similarities between the two asexual lineages, a clustering analysis based on microsatellite polymorphisms shows that asexual Fennoscandian parasites do not share ancestry with any other Hamiltosporidium that we have sampled. Moreover, allele sequence divergence at the hsp70 locus is twice as large in Fennoscandian than in Israeli parasites. Our results indicate that asexual reproduction evolved twice independently, first in Fennoscandian and more recently in the Israeli parasites. We conclude that the independent origin of asexuality in these two populations is associated with the altered parasite mode of transmission and the underlying dynamics of host populations.