ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2014
War and peace: social interactions in infections.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 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
31 citing papers in PubMed, 84 citations in OpenAlex.
- Competitive suppression and release in artemisinin-resistantEvolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Article
- Cooperative antibiotic resistance in bacteria: beyond biofilms.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Virulence Evolution: Thinking Outside of the Host.Evolutionary applications · 2025Article
- Complex interactions in the life cycle of a simple parasite shape the evolution of virulence.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- An anticipatory mechanism enhances the cooperative behaviors of quorum sensing mutants in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Within- and between-host dynamics of producer and non-producer pathogens.Parasitology · 2023Article
- Infection burdens and virulence under heat stress: ecological and evolutionary considerations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- A review on invasions by parasites with complex life cycles: the European strain ofParasitology · 2021Review
- The ratio of single to co-colonization is key to complexity in interacting systems with multiple strains.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- A metagenomics approach to investigate microbiome sociobiology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Kin selection explains the evolution of cooperation in the gut microbiota.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- The evolution of virulence inProceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Harnessing bacterial interactions to manage infections: a review on the opportunistic pathogenJournal of medical microbiology · 2020Review
- Look Who's Talking: T-Even Phage Lysis Inhibition, the Granddaddy of Virus-Virus Intercellular Communication Research.Viruses · 2019Review
- Evolution of increased virulence is associated with decreased spite in the insect-pathogenic bacterium Xenorhabdus nematophila.Biology letters · 2019Article
- Variable effects on growth and defense traits for plant ecotypic differentiation and phenotypic plasticity along elevation gradients.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Article
- Ecology and evolution of facilitation among symbionts.Nature communications · 2018Review
- The bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa senses and gradually responds to interspecific competition for iron.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2018Article
- The influence of related and unrelated co-infections on parasite dynamics and virulence.Oecologia · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
One of the most striking facts about parasites and microbial pathogens that has emerged in the fields of social evolution and disease ecology in the past few decades is that these simple organisms have complex social lives, indulging in a variety of cooperative, communicative and coordinated behaviours. These organisms have provided elegant experimental tests of the importance of relatedness, kin discrimination, cooperation and competition, in driving the evolution of social strategies. Here, we briefly review the social behaviours of parasites and microbial pathogens, including their contributions to virulence, and outline how inclusive fitness theory has helped to explain their evolution. We then take a mechanistically inspired 'bottom-up' approach, discussing how key aspects of the ways in which parasites and pathogens exploit hosts, namely public goods, mobile elements, phenotypic plasticity, spatial structure and multi-species interactions, contribute to the emergent properties of virulence and transmission. We argue that unravelling the complexities of within-host ecology is interesting in its own right, and also needs to be better incorporated into theoretical evolution studies if social behaviours are to be understood and used to control the spread and severity of infectious diseases.
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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.