Selecting for infectivity across metapopulations can increase virulence in the social microbe Bacillus thuringiensis.

ABSTRACT: Passage experiments that sequentially infect hosts with parasites have long been used to manipulate virulence. However, for many invertebrate pathogens, passage has been applied naively without a full theoretical understanding of how best to select for increased virulence and this has led to very mixed results. Understanding the evolution of virulence is complex because selection on parasites occurs across multiple spatial scales with potentially different conflicts operating on parasites with different life histories. For example, in social microbes, strong selection on replication rate within hosts can lead to cheating and loss of virulence, because investment in public goods virulence reduces replication rate. In this study, we tested how varying mutation supply and selection for infect

SUBMITTER: Dimitriu T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10033855 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature