Infection of the fittest: devil facial tumour disease has greatest effect on individuals with highest reproductive output.

ABSTRACT: Emerging infectious diseases rarely affect all members of a population equally and determining how individuals' susceptibility to infection is related to other components of their fitness is critical to understanding disease impacts at a population level and for predicting evolutionary trajectories. We introduce a novel state-space model framework to investigate survival and fecundity of Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) affected by a transmissible cancer, devil facial tumour disease. We show that those devils that become host to tumours have otherwise greater fitness, with higher survival and fecundity rates prior to disease-induced death than non-host individuals that do not become infected, although high tumour loads lead to high mortality. Our finding that individuals with the gr

SUBMITTER: Wells K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6759051 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature