Evolution of Virulence in Emerging Epidemics

Theory predicts that selection for pathogen virulence and horizontal transmission is highest at the onset of an epidemic but decreases thereafter, as the epidemic depletes the pool of susceptible hosts. We tested this prediction by tracking the competition between the latent bacteriophage λ and its virulent mutant λcI857 throughout experimental epidemics taking place in continuous cultures of Escherichia coli. As expected, the virulent λcI857 is strongly favored in the early stage of the epidemic, but loses competition with the latent virus as prevalence increases. We show that the observed transient selection for virulence and horizontal transmission can be fully explained within the framework of evolutionary epidemiology theory. This experimental validation of our predictions is a key step towards a predictive theory for the evolution of virulence in emerging infectious diseases.

• Publication year

  2013

• Venue

  PLoS Pathogens

• Publication date

  2013-03-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1371/journal.ppat.1003209PMID 23516359PMCID 3597519
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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