Life-history correlations change under coinfection leading to higher pathogen load.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Laine AL
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6121793 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Understanding processes maintaining variation in pathogen life-history traits is a key challenge in disease biology, and of importance for predicting when and where risks of disease emergence are highest. Pathogens are expected to encounter tremendous levels of variation in their environment - both abiotic and biotic - and this variation may promote maintenance of variation in pathogen populations through space and time. Here, we measure life-history traits of an obligate fungal pathogen at both asexual and sexual stages under both single infection and coinfection along a temperature gradient. We find that temperature had a significant effect on all measured life-history traits while coinfection only had a significant effect on the number of sexual resting structures produced. The effect of temperature on life-history traits was both direct as well as mediated through a genotype-by-temperature interaction. We conclude that pathogen life-history traits vary in their sensitivity to abiotic and biotic variation in the environment.
| S-EPMC6256741 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC10925827 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundUnderstanding the mechanisms by which diversity is maintained in pathogen populations is critical for epidemiological predictions. Life-history trade-offs have been proposed as a hypothesis for explaining long-term maintenance of variation in pathogen populations, yet the empirical evidence supporting trade-offs has remained mixed. This is in part due to the challenges of documenting successive pathogen life-history stages in many pathosystems. Moreover, little is understood of the role of natural enemies of pathogens on their life-history evolution.ResultsWe characterize life-history-trait variation and possible trade-offs in fungal pathogen Podosphaera plantaginis infecting the host plant Plantago lanceolata. We measured the timing of both asexual and sexual stages, as well as resistance to a hyperparasite of seven pathogen strains that vary in their prevalence in nature. We find significant variation among the strains in their life-history traits that constitute the infection cycle, but no evidence for trade-offs among pathogen development stages, apart from fast pathogen growth coninciding with fast hyperparasite growth. Also, the seemingly least fit pathogen strain was the most prevalent in the nature.ConclusionsWe conclude that in the nature environmental variation, and interactions with the antagonists of pathogens themselves may maintain variation in pathogen populations.
| S-EPMC6624897 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Trade-offs in life-history traits is a central tenet in evolutionary biology, yet their ubiquity and relevance to realized fitness in natural populations remains questioned. Trade-offs in pathogens are of particular interest because they may constrain the evolution and epidemiology of diseases. Here, we studied life-history traits determining transmission in the obligate fungal pathogen, Podosphaera plantaginis, infecting Plantago lanceolata. We find that although traits are positively associated on sympatric host genotypes, on allopatric host genotypes relationships between infectivity and subsequent transmission traits change shape, becoming even negative. The epidemiological prediction of this change in life-history relationships in allopatry is lower disease prevalence in newly established pathogen populations. An analysis of the natural pathogen metapopulation confirms that disease prevalence is lower in newly established pathogen populations and they are more prone to go extinct during winter than older pathogen populations. Hence, life-history trade-offs mediated by pathogen local adaptation may influence epidemiological dynamics at both population and metapopulation levels.
| S-EPMC4208680 | biostudies-literature
Project description:There is a growing interest in understanding how the experience of socioeconomic status (SES) adversity across the life course may accumulate to negatively affect the functioning of biological regulatory systems important to functioning and health in later adulthood. The goal of the present analyses was to examine whether greater life course SES adversity experience would be associated with higher scores on a multi-system allostatic load (AL) index of physiological function in adulthood. Data for these analyses are from 1008 participants (92.2% White) from the Biomarker Substudy of the Study of Midlife in the US (MIDUS). Multiple indicators of SES adversity in childhood (parent educational attainment, welfare status, financial situation) and two points in adulthood (educational attainment, household income, difficulty paying bills, availability of money to meet basic needs, current financial situation) were used to construct SES adversity measures for each life course phase. An AL score was constructed using information on 24 biomarkers from 7 different physiological systems (sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, cardiovascular, lipid metabolism, glucose metabolism, inflammatory immune activity). Analyses indicate higher AL as a function of greater SES adversity at each phase of, and cumulatively across, the life course. Associations were only moderately attenuated when accounting for a wide array of health status, behavioral and psychosocial factors. Findings suggest that SES adversity experience may cumulate across the life course to have a negative impact on multiple biological systems in adulthood. An important aim of future research is the replication of current findings in this predominantly White sample in more ethnically diverse populations.
| S-EPMC3264490 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The recently formulated metabolic theory of ecology has profound implications for the evolution of life histories. Metabolic rate constrains the scaling of production with body mass, so that larger organisms have lower rates of production on a mass-specific basis than smaller ones. Here, we explore the implications of this constraint for life-history evolution. We show that for a range of very simple life histories, Darwinian fitness is equal to birth rate minus death rate. So, natural selection maximizes birth and production rates and minimizes death rates. This implies that decreased body size will generally be favored because it increases production, so long as mortality is unaffected. Alternatively, increased body size will be favored only if it decreases mortality or enhances reproductive success sufficiently to override the preexisting production constraint. Adaptations that may favor evolution of larger size include niche shifts that decrease mortality by escaping predation or that increase fecundity by exploiting new abundant food sources. These principles can be generalized to better understand the intimate relationship between the genetic currency of evolution and the metabolic currency of ecology.
| S-EPMC1693791 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Plant pathogen traits, such as transmission mode and overwintering strategy, may have important effects on dispersal and persistence, and drive disease dynamics. Still, we lack insights into how life-history traits influence spatiotemporal disease dynamics. We adopted a multifaceted approach, combining experimental assays, theory and field surveys, to investigate whether information about two pathogen life-history traits - infectivity and overwintering strategy - can predict pathogen metapopulation dynamics in natural systems. For this, we focused on four fungal pathogens (two rust fungi, one chytrid fungus and one smut fungus) on the forest herb Anemone nemorosa. Pathogens infecting new plants mostly via spores (the chytrid and smut fungi) had higher patch occupancies and colonization rates than pathogens causing mainly systemic infections and overwintering in the rhizomes (the two rust fungi). Although the rust fungi more often occupied well-connected plant patches, the chytrid and smut fungi were equally or more common in isolated patches. Host patch size was positively related to patch occupancy and colonization rates for all pathogens. Predicting disease dynamics is crucial for understanding the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of host-pathogen interactions, and to prevent disease outbreaks. Our study shows that combining experiments, theory and field observations is a useful way to predict disease dynamics.
| S-EPMC9306763 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The infant gut microbiome has lifelong implications on health and immunity but there is still limited understanding of the microbiome differences and similarities between children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) vs. high-income countries (HICs). Here, we describe and compare the microbiome profile of children aged under 48 months in two urban areas: Maputo, Mozambique and Atlanta, USA using shotgun metagenomics. The gut microbiome of American children showed distinct development, characterized by higher alpha diversity after infancy, compared to the same age group of African children, and the microbiomes clustered separately based on geographic location or age. The abundances of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and virulence factors (VFs) were significantly higher in Maputo children, driven primarily by several primary and opportunistic pathogens. Most notably, about 50% of Maputo children under the age of two were positive for enterotoxigenic (ETEC) and typical enteropathogenic (EPEC) Escherichia coli diagnostic genes while none of the Atlanta age-matched children showed such a positive signal. In contrast, commensal species such as Phocaeicola vulgatus and Bacteroides caccae were more abundant in Atlanta, potentially reflecting diets rich in animal protein and susceptibility to inflammatory diseases. Overall, our results suggest that the different environments characterizing the two cities have significant, distinctive signatures on the microbiota of children and its development over time. Lack of safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) conditions and/or unsafe food sources may explain the higher enteric pathogen load among children in Maputo.
| S-EPMC9723681 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundAdaptation of pathogens to their hosts depends critically on factors affecting pathogen reproductive rate. While pathogen reproduction is the end result of an intricate interaction between host and pathogen, the relative contributions of host and pathogen genotype to variation in pathogen life history within the host are not well understood. Untangling these contributions allows us to identify traits with sufficient genetic variation for selection to act and to identify mechanisms of coevolution between pathogens and their hosts. We investigated the effects of pathogen and host genotype on three life-history components of pathogen fitness; infection efficiency, latent period, and sporulation capacity, in the oat crown rust fungus, Puccinia coronata f.sp. avenae, as it infects oats (Avena sativa).ResultsWe show that both pathogen and host genotype significantly affect total spore production but do so through their effects on different life-history stages. Pathogen genotype has the strongest effect on the early stage of infection efficiency, while host genotype most strongly affects the later life-history stages of latent period and sporulation capacity. In addition, host genotype affected the relationship between pathogen density and the later life-history traits of latent period and sporulation capacity. We did not find evidence of pathogen-by-host genotypic (GxG) interactions.ConclusionOur results illustrate mechanisms by which variation in host populations will affect the evolution of pathogen life history. Results show that different pathogen life-history stages have the potential to respond differently to selection by host or pathogen genotype and suggest mechanisms of antagonistic coevolution. Pathogen populations may adapt to host genotypes through increased infection efficiency while their plant hosts may adapt by limiting the later stages of pathogen growth and spore production within the host.
| S-EPMC3483255 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Copepods play a critical role in the carbon cycle of the planet - they mediate the sequestration of carbon into the deep ocean and are the trophic link between phytoplankton and marine food webs. Global change stressors that decrease copepod productivity create the potential for catastrophic positive feedback loops. Accordingly, a growing list of studies examine the evolutionary capacity of copepods to adapt to the two primary stressors associated with global change: warmer temperatures and lower pH. But the evolutionary capacity of copepods to adapt to changing food regimes, the third major stressor associated with global change, remains unknown. We used experimental evolution to explore how a 10-fold difference in food availability affects life history evolution in the copepod, Tisbe sp. over 2 years, and spanning 30+ generations. Different food regimes evoked evolutionary responses across the entire copepod life history: we observed evolution in body size, size-fecundity relationships and offspring investment strategies. Our results suggest that changes to food regimes reshape life histories and that cryptic evolution in traits such as body size is likely. We demonstrate that evolution in response to changes in ocean productivity will alter consumer life histories and may distort trophic links in marine foodchains. Evolution in response to changing phytoplankton productivity may alter the efficacy of the global carbon pump in ways that have not been anticipated until now.
| S-EPMC10363812 | biostudies-literature