ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2020
The problem of mediocre generalists: population genetics and eco-evolutionary perspectives on host breadth evolution in pathogens.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 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
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evidence for balancing selection on loci associated with host use in the genome of a generalist plant parasite.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Competition constrains parasite adaptation to thermal heterogeneity.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Sex decreases the pleiotropic costs of local adaptation by purging hitchhiking load.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- A Phylogenetic Host-Range Index Reveals Ecological Constraints in Phage Specialisation and Virulence.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- A generalist vector-transmitted parasite exhibits population genetic structure among host genera.Parasitology · 2025Article
- Quantifying the strength of viral fitness trade-offs between hosts: a meta-analysis of pleiotropic fitness effects.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- Spatial clustering of hosts can favor specialist parasites.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Pathogen contingency loci and the evolution of host specificity: Simple sequence repeats mediate Bartonella adaptation to a wild rodent host.PLoS pathogens · 2024Article
- Multispecies interactions and the community context of the evolution of virulence.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- Genomic and ecological factors shaping specialism and generalism across an entire subphylum.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Assessing Variation in the Individual-Level Impacts of a Multihost Pathogen.Transboundary and emerging diseases · 2023Article
- Effective specialist or jack of all trades? Experimental evolution of a crop pest in fluctuating and stable environments.Evolutionary applications · 2022Article
- Cellular and immunological mechanisms influence host-adapted phenotypes in a vector-borne microparasite.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Article
- The three Ts of virulence evolution during zoonotic emergence.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Avian vampire fly (Philornis downsi) mortality differs across Darwin's finch host species.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Many of our theories for the generation and maintenance of diversity in nature depend on the existence of specialist biotic interactions which, in host-pathogen systems, also shape cross-species disease emergence. As such, niche breadth evolution, especially in host-parasite systems, remains a central focus in ecology and evolution. The predominant explanation for the existence of specialization in the literature is that niche breadth is constrained by trade-offs, such that a generalist is less fit on any particular environment than a given specialist. This trade-off theory has been used to predict niche breadth (co)evolution in both population genetics and eco-evolutionary models, with the different modelling methods providing separate, complementary insights. However, trade-offs may be far from universal, so population genetics theory has also proposed alternate mechanisms for costly generalism, including mutation accumulation. However, these mechanisms have yet to be integrated into eco-evolutionary models in order to understand how the mechanism of costly generalism alters the biological and ecological circumstances predicted to maintain specialism. In this review, we outline how population genetics and eco-evolutionary models based on trade-offs have provided insights for parasite niche breadth evolution and argue that the population genetics-derived mutation accumulation theory needs to be better integrated into eco-evolutionary theory.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.