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Decomposing parasite fitness reveals the basis of specialization in a two‐host, two‐parasite system

The ecological specialization of parasites–whether they can obtain high fitness on very few or very many different host species–is a determining feature of their ecology. In order to properly assess specialization, it is imperative to measure parasite fitness across host species; to understand its o...

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Autores principales: Lievens, Eva J. P., Perreau, Julie, Agnew, Philip, Michalakis, Yannis, Lenormand, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121826/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30283690
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/evl3.65
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author Lievens, Eva J. P.
Perreau, Julie
Agnew, Philip
Michalakis, Yannis
Lenormand, Thomas
author_facet Lievens, Eva J. P.
Perreau, Julie
Agnew, Philip
Michalakis, Yannis
Lenormand, Thomas
author_sort Lievens, Eva J. P.
collection PubMed
description The ecological specialization of parasites–whether they can obtain high fitness on very few or very many different host species–is a determining feature of their ecology. In order to properly assess specialization, it is imperative to measure parasite fitness across host species; to understand its origins, fitness must be decomposed into the underlying traits. Despite the omnipresence of parasites with multiple hosts, very few studies assess and decompose their specialization in this way. To bridge this gap, we quantified the infectivity, virulence, and transmission rate of two parasites, the horizontally transmitted microsporidians Anostracospora rigaudi and Enterocytospora artemiae, in their natural hosts, the brine shrimp Artemia parthenogenetica and Artemia franciscana. Our results demonstrate that each parasite performs well on one of the two host species (A. rigaudi on A. parthenogenetica, and E. artemiae on A. franciscana), and poorly on the other. This partial specialization is driven by high infectivity and transmission rates in the preferred host, and is associated with maladaptive virulence and large costs of resistance in the other. Our study represents a rare empirical contribution to the study of parasite evolution in multihost systems, highlighting the negative effects of under‐ and overexploitation when adapting to multiple hosts.
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spelling pubmed-61218262018-10-03 Decomposing parasite fitness reveals the basis of specialization in a two‐host, two‐parasite system Lievens, Eva J. P. Perreau, Julie Agnew, Philip Michalakis, Yannis Lenormand, Thomas Evol Lett Letters The ecological specialization of parasites–whether they can obtain high fitness on very few or very many different host species–is a determining feature of their ecology. In order to properly assess specialization, it is imperative to measure parasite fitness across host species; to understand its origins, fitness must be decomposed into the underlying traits. Despite the omnipresence of parasites with multiple hosts, very few studies assess and decompose their specialization in this way. To bridge this gap, we quantified the infectivity, virulence, and transmission rate of two parasites, the horizontally transmitted microsporidians Anostracospora rigaudi and Enterocytospora artemiae, in their natural hosts, the brine shrimp Artemia parthenogenetica and Artemia franciscana. Our results demonstrate that each parasite performs well on one of the two host species (A. rigaudi on A. parthenogenetica, and E. artemiae on A. franciscana), and poorly on the other. This partial specialization is driven by high infectivity and transmission rates in the preferred host, and is associated with maladaptive virulence and large costs of resistance in the other. Our study represents a rare empirical contribution to the study of parasite evolution in multihost systems, highlighting the negative effects of under‐ and overexploitation when adapting to multiple hosts. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2018-07-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6121826/ /pubmed/30283690 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/evl3.65 Text en © 2018 The Author(s). Evolution Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) and European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Letters
Lievens, Eva J. P.
Perreau, Julie
Agnew, Philip
Michalakis, Yannis
Lenormand, Thomas
Decomposing parasite fitness reveals the basis of specialization in a two‐host, two‐parasite system
title Decomposing parasite fitness reveals the basis of specialization in a two‐host, two‐parasite system
title_full Decomposing parasite fitness reveals the basis of specialization in a two‐host, two‐parasite system
title_fullStr Decomposing parasite fitness reveals the basis of specialization in a two‐host, two‐parasite system
title_full_unstemmed Decomposing parasite fitness reveals the basis of specialization in a two‐host, two‐parasite system
title_short Decomposing parasite fitness reveals the basis of specialization in a two‐host, two‐parasite system
title_sort decomposing parasite fitness reveals the basis of specialization in a two‐host, two‐parasite system
topic Letters
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6121826/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30283690
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/evl3.65
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