ArticlePLoS pathogens2015
Spatial structure, transmission modes and the evolution of viral exploitation strategies.
Article in PLoS pathogens, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed.
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- The adaptive plasticity of temperate phageVirus evolution · 2026Article
- Spatial scale break in ecological strategies for host use by plant viruses.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Article
- Viral Diversity in Polar Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Soils: A Transect Study from King George Island, Antarctica.Food and environmental virology · 2025Article
- Abundance measurements reveal the balance between lysis and lysogeny in the human gut microbiome.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Discovering Broader Host Ranges and an IS-bound Prophage Class Through Long-Read Metagenomics.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Vertical and horizontal transmission of plant viruses: two extremes of a continuum?Npj viruses · 2024Review
- Multiscale selection in spatially structured populations.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Death is overrated: the potential role of detection in driving virulence evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Response of soil viral communities to land use changes.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Evolution of class-structured populations in periodic environments.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2022Article
- Interactions between bacterial and phage communities in natural environments.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2022Review
- Regulation of prophage induction and lysogenization by phage communication systems.Current biology : CB · 2021Article
- The three Ts of virulence evolution during zoonotic emergence.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Review
- From Bench to Keyboard and Back Again: A Brief History of Lambda Phage Modeling.Annual review of biophysics · 2021Review
- Bidirectional interactions between host social behaviour and parasites arise through ecological and evolutionary processes.Parasitology · 2021Article
- Article
- The evolutionary dynamics of viruses: virion release strategies, time delays and fitness minima.Virus evolution · 2021Article
- On the evolutionary epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2.Current biology : CB · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Spatial structure and local migration are predicted to promote the evolution of less aggressive host exploitation strategies in horizontally transmitted pathogens. Here we explore the effect of spatial structure on the evolution of pathogens that can use both horizontal and vertical routes of transmission. First, we analyse theoretically how vertical transmission can alter evolutionary trajectories and confirm that space can impede the spread of virulent pathogens. Second, we test this prediction using the latent phage λ which transmits horizontally and vertically in Escherichia coli populations. We show that the latent phage λ wins competition against the virulent mutant λcI857 in spatially structured epidemics, but loses when spatial structure is eroded. The vertical transmission of phage λ immunizes its local host pool against superinfection and prevents the spread of the virulent λcI857. This effect breaks down when mixing facilitates horizontal transmission to uninfected hosts. We thus confirm the importance of spatial structure for the evolutionary maintenance of prudent infection strategies in latent viruses.
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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.