Resource asynchrony and landscape homogenization as drivers of virulence evolution: The case of a directly transmitted disease in a social host.

ABSTRACT: Throughout the last decades, the emergence of zoonotic diseases and the frequency of disease outbreaks have increased substantially, fuelled by habitat encroachment and vectors overlapping with more hosts due to global change. The virulence of pathogens is one key trait for successful invasion. In order to understand how global change drivers such as habitat homogenization and climate change drive pathogen virulence evolution, we adapted an established individual-based model of host-pathogen dynamics. Our model simulates a population of social hosts affected by a directly transmitted evolving pathogen in a dynamic landscape. Pathogen virulence evolution results in multiple strains in the model that differ in their transmission capability and lethality. We represent the effects of global ch

SUBMITTER: Kurschner T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10877554 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature