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Intensity-dependent host mortality: what can it tell us about larval growth strategies in complex life cycle helminths?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2011

D. P. BENESH
D. P. BENESH*
Affiliation:
Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology, August-Thienemann-Strasse 2, 24306 Plön, Germany
*
*Corresponding author: Tel: +49 4522 763262. Fax: +49 4522 763310. E-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

Complex life cycle helminths use their intermediate hosts as both a source of nutrients and as transportation. There is an assumed trade-off between these functions in that parasite growth may reduce host survival and thus transmission. The virulence of larval helminths can be assessed by experimentally increasing infection intensities and recording how parasite biomass and host mortality scale with intensity. I summarize the literature on these relationships in larval helminths and I provide an empirical example using the nematode Camallanus lacustris in its copepod first host. In all species studied thus far, including C. lacustris, overall parasite volume increases with intensity. Although a few studies observed host survival to decrease predictably with intensity, several studies found no intensity-dependent mortality or elevated mortality only at extreme intensities. For instance, no intensity-dependent mortality was observed in male copepods infected with C. lacustris, whereas female survival was reduced only at high intensities (>3) and only after worms were fully developed. These observations suggest that at low, natural intensity levels parasites do not exploit intermediate hosts as much as they presumably could and that increased growth would not obviously entail survival costs.

Keywords

crowding effectgrowth costlife history strategyMacrocyclops albidusNematodaresource constraintvirulence
Type
Research Article
Information
Parasitology , Volume 138 , Issue 7 , June 2011 , pp. 913 - 925
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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