Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-mzp66 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-12T09:18:05.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Coevolution of hosts and parasites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2009

R. M. Anderson  and
R. M. May
R. M. Anderson
Affiliation:
Department of Pure and Applied Biology, Imperial College, London University, London SW7 2BB
R. M. May
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The coevolution of parasites and their hosts has both general biological interest and practical implications in agricultural, veterinary and medical fields. Surprisingly, most medical, parasitological and ecological texts dismiss the subject with unsupported statements to the effect that ‘successful’ parasite species evolve to be harmless to their hosts. Recently, however, several people have explored theoretical aspects of the population genetics of host-parasite associations; these authors conclude that such associations may be responsible for much of the genetic diversity found within natural populations, from blood group polymorphisms (Haldane, 1949) to protein polymorphisms in general (Clarke, 1975, 1976) and to histocompatibility systems (Duncan, Wakeland & Klein, 1980). It has also been argued that pathogens may constitute the selective force responsible for the evolution and maintenance of sexual reproduction in animal and plant species (Jaenike, 1978; Hamilton, 1980, 1981, 1982; Bremermann, 1980).

Type
Trends and Perspectives
Information
Parasitology , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , October 1982 , pp. 411 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, R. M. & May, R. M. (1979). Population biology of infectious diseases: Part I. Nature, London 280, 361–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anderson, R. M. & May, R. M. (1981). The population dynamics of microparasites and their invertebrate hosts. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 291, 451–524.Google Scholar
Anderson, R. M. & May, R. M. (1982 a). Frequency and density dependent effects in the coevolution of hosts and parasites (in preparation).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, R. M. & May, R. M. (1982 b). Directly transmitted infectious diseases: control by vaccination. Science, 215, 1053–1060.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anderson, R. M., Jackson, H., May, R. M. & Smith, T. (1981). The population dynamics of fox rabies in Europe. Nature, London 289, 765–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bailey, N. J. T.The Mathematical Theory of Infectious Diseases. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Berry, R. J. (1980). The great mouse festival. Nature, London 283, 15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bremermann, H. J. (1980). Sex and polymorphism as strategies in host-pathogen interactions. Journal of Theoretical Biology 87, 671–702.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burnet, M. & White, D. O. (1972). Natural History of Infectious Disease. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clarke, B. C. (1975). The causes of biological diversity. Scientific American, 233, (2) 50–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clarke, B. C. (1976). The ecological genetics of host–parasite relationships. In Genetic Aspects of Host–Parasite Relationships (ed. Taylor, A. E. R. and Muller, R.), pp. 87–103. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Day, P. R. (1974). Genetics of Host-Parasite Interactions. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Dietz, K. (1975). Transmission and control of arbovirus diseases. In Epidemiology (ed. Ludwig, D. and Cooke, K. L.), pp. 104–121. Philadelphia: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.Google Scholar
Dietz, K. (1976). The incidence of infectious diseases under the influence of seasonal fluctuations. In Mathematical Models in Medicine: Lecture Notes in Biomathematics, vol. 11 (ed. Berger, J.Buhler, W.Repges, R. and Tautu, P.), pp. 1–15. Berlin: Springer Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duncan, W. R., Wakeland, E. K. & Klein, J. (1980). Heterozygosity of H-2 loci in wild mice. Nature, London 281, 603–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fenner, F. & Ratcliffe, F. N. (1965). Myxomatosis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fenner, F. & Myers, K. (1978). Myxoma virus and myxomatosis in retrospect: the first quarter century of a new disease. In Viruses and Environment, pp. 539–570. London: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillespie, J. H. (1975). Natural selection for resistance to epidemics. Ecology 56, 493–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenwood, M., Bradford Hill, A., Topley, W. W. C. & Wilson, J. (1936). Experimental Epidemiology. Special Report Series, No. 209, Medical Research Council. HMSO; London.Google Scholar
Haldane, J. B. S. (1949). Disease and evolution. La Ricerca Scientific Supplement 19, 68–76.Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. (1980). Sex versus non-sex versus parasite. Oikos 35, 282–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. (1981). Sex versus non-sex versus parasite. In The Mathematical Theory of the Dynamics of Biological Populations II (ed. Hiorns, R. W. and Cooke, D.), pp. 139–155. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. (1982). Pathogens as causes of genetic diversity in their host populations. In Population Biology of Infectious Diseases (ed. Anderson, R. M. and May, R. M.). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. D. & Zuk, M. (1982). Heritable true fitness and bright birds: a role for parasites ? Science (in the Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaenike, J. (1978). An hypothesis to account for the maintenance of sex within populations. Evolutionary Theory 3, 191–4.Google Scholar
Kemper, J. T. (1982). The evolutionary effect of endemic infectious disease: continuous models for an invariant pathogen. Mathematical Biosciences (in the Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendall, D. G. (1956). Deterministic and stochastic epidemics in closed populations. Proceedings of the 3rd Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability 4, 149–65.Google Scholar
Kermack, W. O. & McKendrick, A. G. (1927). A contribution to the mathematical theory of epidemics. Proceedings of the Royal Society, A 115, 700–21.Google Scholar
Leonard, K. J. (1977). Selection pressures and plant pathogens. Annals of the New York Academy of Science 287, 207–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, J. W. (1981 a). On the coevolution of pathogen and host: I. general theory of discrete time coevolution. Journal of Theoretical Biology 93, 927–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, J. W. (1981 b). On the coevolution of pathogen and host: II. selfing hosts and haploid pathogens. Journal of Theoretical Biology 93, 953–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levin, B. R., Allison, A. C., Bremermann, H. J., Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., Clarke, B. C., Fretzel-Beyme, R., Hamilton, W. D., Levin, S. A., May, R. M.Thieme, H. R. (1982). Evolution of hosts and parasites. In Population Biology of Infectious Disease (ed. Anderson, R. M. and May, R. M.). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Levin, S. A. & Pimental, D. (1981). Selection of intermediate rates of increase in parasite-hosts systems. American Naturalist 117, 308–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marmorosch, K. & Shope, R. E. (1975). Invertebrate Immunity. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
May, R. M. (1976). Estimating r: a pedagogical note. American Naturalist 110, 496–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
May, R. M. (1979). Bifurcations and dynamic complexity in ecological systems. Annals of the New York Academy of Science 316, 517–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
May, R. M. & Anderson, R. M. (1979). Population biology of infectious diseases: II. Nature, London 280, 455–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard, Smith J. (1978). The Evolution of Sex. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maynard, Smith J. & Price, G. R. (1973). The logic of animal conflicts. Nature, London 246, 15–18.Google Scholar
Mead-Briggs, A. R. & Vaughan, J. A. (1975). The differential transmissability of myxoma virus strains of differing virulence grades by the rabbit flea Spilopsyllus cuniculi (Dale) Journal of Hygiene 75, 237–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mode, C. J. (1958). A mathematical model for the co-evolution of obligate parasites and their hosts. Evolution 12, 158–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oster, G. F., Ipaktchi, A. & Rocklin, S. (1976). Phenotypic structure and bifurcation behaviour of population models. Theoretical Population Biology 10, 365–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Person, C. (1966). Genetic polymorphism in parasite systems. Nature, London 212, 266–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pimentel, D. (1968). Population regulation and genetic feedback. Science, 159, 1432–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ross, J. (1982). Myxomatosis: the natural evolution of the disease. In Animal Disease in Relation to Animal Conservation.Symposium of the Zoological Society of London,26th–27th November, 1981 (in the Press).Google Scholar
Saunders, I. W. (1980). A model for myxomatosis. Mathematical Biosciences 48, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der Plank, J. E. (1975). Principles of Plant Infection. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Williams, G. C. (1975). Sex and Evolution. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Yorke, J. A., Hethcote, H. W. & Nold, A. (1978). Dynamics and control of the transmission of gonorrhea. Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases 5, 51–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yorke, J. A., Nathanson, N., Pianigiani, G. & Martin, J. (1979). Seasonality and the requirements for perpetuation and eradication of viruses in populations. American Journal of Epidemiology 109, 103–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yu, P. (1972). Some host-parasite genetic interaction models. Theoretical Population Biology 3, 347–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed