Environmental variation causes different (co) evolutionary routes to the same adaptive destination across parasite populations.

ABSTRACT: Epidemics are engines for host-parasite coevolution, where parasite adaptation to hosts drives reciprocal adaptation in host populations. A key challenge is to understand whether parasite adaptation and any underlying evolution and coevolution is repeatable across ecologically realistic populations that experience different environmental conditions, or if each population follows a completely unique evolutionary path. We established twenty replicate pond populations comprising an identical suite of genotypes of crustacean host, Daphnia magna, and inoculum of their parasite, Pasteuria ramosa. Using a time-shift experiment, we compared parasite infection traits before and after epidemics and linked patterns of parasite evolution with shifts in host genotype frequencies. Parasite

SUBMITTER: Auld SKJR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6121849 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature