ArticleBMC evolutionary biology2013
Lotka-Volterra dynamics kills the Red Queen: population size fluctuations and associated stochasticity dramatically change host-parasite coevolution.
Article in BMC evolutionary biology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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28 citing papers in PubMed.
- Experimental evolution toward extinction in a molecular host-parasite system.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Host Co-Occurrence and Population Size Explain Genetic Differentiation and Diversity in Seal Lice.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- The impact of sterility-mortality tolerance and recovery-transmission trade-offs on host-parasite coevolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- How do fluctuating ecological dynamics impact the evolution of hosts and parasites?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Mutation in the Two-Component System Regulator YycH Leads to Daptomycin Tolerance in Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus upon Evolution with a Population Bottleneck.Microbiology spectrum · 2022Article
- Coevolutionary theory of hosts and parasites.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Review
- Should we hail the Red King? Evolutionary consequences of a mutualistic lifestyle in genomes of lichenized ascomycetes.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Population size impacts host-pathogen coevolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Population Bottlenecks Strongly Affect the Evolutionary Dynamics of Antibiotic Persistence.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Host-parasite co-evolution and its genomic signature.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2020Review
- Coinfecting parasites can modify fluctuating selection dynamics in host-parasite coevolution.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- The problem of mediocre generalists: population genetics and eco-evolutionary perspectives on host breadth evolution in pathogens.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Honey bees harbor a diverse gut virome engaging in nested strain-level interactions with the microbiota.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Inference of coevolutionary dynamics and parameters from host and parasite polymorphism data of repeated experiments.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- How long do Red Queen dynamics survive under genetic drift? A comparative analysis of evolutionary and eco-evolutionary models.BMC evolutionary biology · 2020Article
- Neutral genomic signatures of host-parasite coevolution.BMC evolutionary biology · 2019Article
- Immunogenetic response of the bananaquit in the face of malarial parasites.BMC evolutionary biology · 2019Article
- CRISPR evolution and bacteriophage persistence in the context of population bottlenecks.RNA biology · 2019Article
- Review
- Synthetic Mutualism and the Intervention Dilemma.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
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4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundHost-parasite coevolution is generally believed to follow Red Queen dynamics consisting of ongoing oscillations in the frequencies of interacting host and parasite alleles. This belief is founded on previous theoretical work, which assumes infinite or constant population size. To what extent are such sustained oscillations realistic?
resultsHere, we use a related mathematical modeling approach to demonstrate that ongoing Red Queen dynamics is unlikely. In fact, they collapse rapidly when two critical pieces of realism are acknowledged: (i) population size fluctuations, caused by the antagonism of the interaction in concordance with the Lotka-Volterra relationship; and (ii) stochasticity, acting in any finite population. Together, these two factors cause fast allele fixation. Fixation is not restricted to common alleles, as expected from drift, but also seen for originally rare alleles under a wide parameter space, potentially facilitating spread of novel variants.
conclusionOur results call for a paradigm shift in our understanding of host-parasite coevolution, strongly suggesting that these are driven by recurrent selective sweeps rather than continuous allele oscillations.
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