ArticleBiology letters2019
Can pathogens optimize both transmission and dispersal by exploiting sexual dimorphism in their hosts?
Article in Biology letters, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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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
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Parasite prevalence is determined by infection state- and risk-dependent dispersal of the host.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- A biological invasion modifies the dynamics of a host-parasite arms race.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Pathogen exposure reduces sexual dimorphism in a host's upper thermal limits.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Pathogens often rely on their host for dispersal. Yet, maximizing fitness via replication can cause damage to the host and an associated reduction in host movement, incurring a trade-off between transmission and dispersal. Here, we test the idea that pathogens might mitigate this trade-off between reproductive fitness and dispersal by taking advantage of sexual dimorphism in their host, tailoring responses separately to males and females. Using experimental populations of Daphnia magna and its bacterial pathogen Pasteuria ramosa as a test-case, we find evidence that this pathogen can use male hosts as a dispersal vector, and the larger females as high-quality resource patches for optimized production of transmission spores. As sexual dimorphism in dispersal and body size is widespread across the animal kingdom, this differential exploitation of the sexes by a pathogen might be an unappreciated phenomenon, possibly evolved in various systems.
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Registered trials
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