ArticleThe American naturalist2011
Competition and the evolution of reproductive restraint in malaria parasites.
Article in The American naturalist, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 69 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
69 citing papers in PubMed.
- Plastic responses ofBiology letters · 2025Article
- Malaria parasites can optimize transmission investment by sensing two within-host cues.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Multiplication rate variation of malaria parasites from hospital cases and community infections.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Single-cell analyses of polyclonal Plasmodium vivax infections and their consequences on parasite transmission.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Virulence is associated with daily rhythms in the within-host replication of the malaria parasiteEvolutionary applications · 2024Article
- Single-cell analyses of polyclonalResearch square · 2024Article
- Sexual differentiation in human malaria parasites is regulated by competition between phospholipid metabolism and histone methylation.Nature microbiology · 2023Article
- Article
- Article
- Killing the competition: a theoretical framework for liver-stage malaria.Open biology · 2022Article
- Immune selection suppresses the emergence of drug resistance in malaria parasites but facilitates its spread.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- The private life of malaria parasites: Strategies for sexual reproduction.Molecular and biochemical parasitology · 2021Review
- Parasite genetic diversity reflects continued residual malaria transmission in Vhembe District, a hotspot in the Limpopo Province of South Africa.Malaria journal · 2021Article
- Plasmodium falciparum gametocyte carriage in symptomatic patients shows significant association with genetically diverse infections, anaemia, and asexual stage density.Malaria journal · 2021Article
- Lactic Acid Supplementation Increases Quantity and Quality of Gametocytes in Plasmodium falciparum Culture.Infection and immunity · 2020Article
- Metabolic regulation of sexual commitment in Plasmodium falciparum.Current opinion in microbiology · 2020Review
- Article
- Discrimination Experiments in Entamoeba and Evidence from Other Protists Suggest Pathogenic Amebas Cooperate with Kin to Colonize Hosts and Deter Rivals.The Journal of eukaryotic microbiology · 2019Review
- Competition Between Strains ofFrontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2019Article
- Adaptive phenotypic plasticity in malaria parasites is not constrained by previous responses to environmental change.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2019Article
9 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
All organisms must trade off resource allocation between different life processes that determine their survival and reproduction. Malaria parasites replicate asexually in the host but must produce sexual stages to transmit between hosts. Because different specialized stages are required for these functions, the division of resources between these life-history components is a key problem for natural selection to solve. Despite the medical and economic importance of these parasites, their reproductive strategies remain poorly understood and often seem counterintuitive. Here, we tested recent theory predicting that in-host competition shapes how parasites trade off investment in in-host replication relative to between-host transmission. We demonstrate, across several genotypes, that Plasmodium chabaudi parasites detect the presence of competing genotypes and facultatively respond by reducing their investment in sexual stages in the manner predicted to maximize their competitive ability. Furthermore, we show that genotypes adjust their allocation to sexual stages in line with the availability of exploitable red blood cell resources. Our findings are predicted by evolutionary theory developed to explain life-history trade-offs in more traditionally studied multicellular taxa and suggest that the answer to the long-standing question of why so few transmission stages are produced is that in most natural infections heavy investment in reproduction may compromise in-host survival.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.