ArticleEvolution; international journal of organic evolution2016
Predicting optimal transmission investment in malaria parasites.
Article in Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Malaria parasites can optimize transmission investment by sensing two within-host cues.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Co-Infection, but Not Infection Intensity, Increases Shedding in a Gastrointestinal Helminth of Gamebirds.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Virulence is associated with daily rhythms in the within-host replication of the malaria parasiteEvolutionary applications · 2024Article
- Evolutionary modelling indicates that mosquito metabolism shapes the life-history strategies of Plasmodium parasites.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Within- and between-host dynamics of producer and non-producer pathogens.Parasitology · 2023Article
- Declines in prevalence alter the optimal level of sexual investment for the malaria parasiteProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- The private life of malaria parasites: Strategies for sexual reproduction.Molecular and biochemical parasitology · 2021Review
- Plasmodium falciparum gametocyte carriage in symptomatic patients shows significant association with genetically diverse infections, anaemia, and asexual stage density.Malaria journal · 2021Article
- Adaptive plasticity in the gametocyte conversion rate of malaria parasites.PLoS pathogens · 2018Article
- Timing malaria transmission with mosquito fluctuations.Evolution letters · 2018Article
- Gene copy number variation in natural populations of Plasmodium falciparum in Eastern Africa.BMC genomics · 2018Article
- Host-mediated selection impacts the diversity of Plasmodium falciparum antigens within infections.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Altered life history strategies protect malaria parasites against drugs.Evolutionary applications · 2018Article
- Adaptation of Plasmodium falciparum to its transmission environment.Nature ecology & evolution · 2018Article
- ProbingWellcome open research · 2018Article
- Phenotypic plasticity in reproductive effort: malaria parasites respond to resource availability.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- What is a vector?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In vertebrate hosts, malaria parasites face a tradeoff between replicating and the production of transmission stages that can be passed onto mosquitoes. This tradeoff is analogous to growth-reproduction tradeoffs in multicellular organisms. We use a mathematical model tailored to the life cycle and dynamics of malaria parasites to identify allocation strategies that maximize cumulative transmission potential to mosquitoes. We show that plastic strategies can substantially outperform fixed allocation because parasites can achieve greater fitness by investing in proliferation early and delaying the production of transmission stages. Parasites should further benefit from restraining transmission investment later in infection, because such a strategy can help maintain parasite numbers in the face of resource depletion. Early allocation decisions are predicted to have the greatest impact on parasite fitness. If the immune response saturates as parasite numbers increase, parasites should benefit from even longer delays prior to transmission investment. The presence of a competing strain selects for consistently lower levels of transmission investment and dramatically increased exploitation of the red blood cell resource. While we provide a detailed analysis of tradeoffs pertaining to malaria life history, our approach for identifying optimal plastic allocation strategies may be broadly applicable.
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