Severe malaria and associated high parasite burdens occur more frequently in humans lacking robust adaptive immunity to Plasmodium falciparum Nevertheless, the host may partly control blood-stage parasite numbers while adaptive immunity is gradually established. Parasite control has typically been attributed to enhanced removal of parasites by the host, although in vivo quantification of this p...

Host populations with high genetic diversity are predicted to have lower levels of infection prevalence. This theory assumes that host genetic diversity results in variation in susceptibility and that parasites exhibit variation in infectivity. Empirical studies on the effects of host heterogeneity typically neglect the role of parasite diversity. We conducted three laboratory experiments desig...

The early-phase migration dynamics of Echinococcus multilocularis in the intermediate hosts remain largely unknown. We compared parasite burden intestine, liver and faeces DBA/2 C57BL/6 mouse strains using parasite-specific quantitative PCR. Our results indicated that parasites invaded mainly from middle segments small intestine completed to within 24 h p.i. mice had lower DNA burdens but highe...

Hypothesis: Sexual host populations rapidly evolve specific resistance against parasites, and consequently diverge from populations under relaxed parasite-mediated selection or selection imposed by different parasite populations. Organisms: The freshwater snail, Potamopyrgus antipodarum, and two different populations of a naturally prevalent sterilizing trematode, Microphallus sp. Methods: Expe...

Despite a century of research into the factors that generate and maintain biodiversity, we know remarkably little about the drivers of parasite diversity. To identify the mechanisms governing parasite diversity, we combined surveys of 8100 amphibian hosts with an outdoor experiment that tested theory developed for free-living species. Our analyses revealed that parasite diversity increased cons...