Comparative demography elucidates the longevity of parasitic and symbiotic relationships.

ABSTRACT: Parasitic and symbiotic relationships govern vast nutrient and energy flows, yet controversy surrounds their longevity. Enduring relationships may engender parallel phylogenies among hosts and parasites, but so may ephemeral relationships when parasites colonize related hosts. An understanding of whether symbiont and host populations have grown and contracted in concert would be useful when considering the temporal durability of these relationships. Here, we devised methods to compare demographic histories derived from genomic data. We compared the historical growth of the agent of severe human malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, and its mosquito vector, Anopheles gambiae, to human and primate histories, thereby discerning long-term parallels and anthropogenic population explosions. The growth

SUBMITTER: Hecht LBB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6191686 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature