Host-parasite relatedness in wood ducks: patterns of kinship and parasite success

Predator-spreaders: predation can enhance parasite success in a planktonic host-parasite system.

The "healthy herds" hypothesis suggests that selective predators, by acting as parasite sinks, may inhibit the start of epidemics and reduce prevalence of infection. Here, we describe a counter-example using field patterns, experiments, and a model. The predator Chaoborus releases infective spores of a fungal parasite and, in doing so, may facilitate epidemics in Daphnia populations. In the fie...

Actinomyces bovis a possible cause for calcification of the parasite in the host tissue

Host-parasite coevolutionary dynamics with generalized success/failure infection genetics.

Host-parasite infection genetics can be more complex than envisioned by classic models such as the gene-for-gene or matching-allele models. By means of a mathematical model, I investigate the coevolutionary dynamics arising from a large set of generalized models of infection genetics in which hosts are either fully resistant or fully susceptible to a parasite, depending on the genotype of both ...

Parasite-driven extinction in spatially explicit host-parasite systems.

General host-parasite theory suggests that parasites may be implicated in the extinction of their hosts by causing instability that leads to increased risk of stochastic extinction. In contrast, spatially explicit models suggest that the parasite may directly drive the host population to extinction. Here we examine the ecological characteristics of host-parasite interactions that favor parasite...

Parasite-host Interactions