Host-parasite and parasite-host catalogue of South American Tachinidae (Diptera) )

Parasite-host Interactions

Host – Parasite Genetics

Host-parasite interactions often have complex dynamics. At the level of individual allele frequencies, the dynamics are difficult to predict and difficult to measure. However, aggregate properties of polymorphism, such as allelic diversity or the frequency of resistance, may be relatively easy to work with. I study this problem with computer simulations of a host-parasite model. In one example,...

Host – Parasite Genetics

The published article may differ slightly from this version. Please check the published version for quotation and citation. Introduction Host-parasite diversity can be described in two different ways. The first is simply the observed variability among the hosts and parasites in a particular population. For example, Burdon and Jarosz (1991) classified 67 wild flax plants into 10 distinct resista...

Host age modulates within-host parasite competition.

In many host populations, one of the most striking differences among hosts is their age. While parasite prevalence differences in relation to host age are well known, little is known on how host age impacts ecological and evolutionary dynamics of diseases. Using two clones of the water flea Daphnia magna and two clones of its bacterial parasite Pasteuria ramosa, we examined how host age at expo...

Host defense reinforces host-parasite cospeciation.

Cospeciation occurs when interacting groups, such as hosts and parasites, speciate in tandem, generating congruent phylogenies. Cospeciation can be a neutral process in which parasites speciate merely because they are isolated on diverging host islands. Adaptive evolution may also play a role, but this has seldom been tested. We explored the adaptive basis of cospeciation by using a model syste...