文章基本信息

标题：Coevolution of parasite virulence and host mating strategies
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作者：Ben Ashby ; Michael Boots
期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2015
卷号：112
期号：43
页码：13290-13295
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1508397112
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：SignificanceIt is well understood that parasitism may help to explain the evolution of mating strategies, but host behavior is, in turn, critical to the transmission and therefore the evolution of parasites. Despite this clear reciprocity, we lack a coevolutionary theory of mate choice and parasite virulence. We show how coevolution leads to a wide range of dynamics, including cycling and stable strategies, and that this resolves a key criticism of the role of parasites in mate choice: that parasites will evolve to be avirulent, thus reducing their impact on mating strategies. Coevolution also leads to new predictions for the role of several host and parasite traits on selection for mate choice that will guide future experimental and comparative work. Parasites are thought to play an important role in sexual selection and the evolution of mating strategies, which in turn are likely to be critical to the transmission and therefore the evolution of parasites. Despite this clear interdependence we have little understanding of parasite-mediated sexual selection in the context of reciprocal parasite evolution. Here we develop a general coevolutionary model between host mate preference and the virulence of a sexually transmitted parasite. We show when the characteristics of both the host and parasite lead to coevolutionarily stable strategies or runaway selection, and when coevolutionary cycling between high and low levels of host mate choosiness and virulence is possible. A prominent argument against parasites being involved in sexual selection is that they should evolve to become less virulent when transmission depends on host mating success. The present study, however, demonstrates that coevolution can maintain stable host mate choosiness and parasite virulence or indeed coevolutionary cycling of both traits. We predict that choosiness should vary inversely with parasite virulence and that both relatively long and short life spans select against choosy behavior in the host. The model also reveals that hosts can evolve different behavioral responses from the same initial conditions, which highlights difficulties in using comparative analysis to detect parasite-mediated sexual selection. Taken as a whole, our results emphasize the importance of viewing parasite-mediated sexual selection in the context of coevolution.
关键词：host–parasite coevolution ; mate choice ; virulence ; transmission avoidance ; sexually transmitted infection