Interactions Among Co-infecting Parasite Species: A Mechanism Maintaining Genetic Variation In Parasites?

Main Category: Veterinary
Also Included In: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 29 Oct 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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Animals are often infected by several parasite species. If the co-infecting parasites interact, this can alter the disease dynamics by increasing or decreasing the infection success.

Interactions between strains of fish eye flukes, however, show high variation between different strain combinations of co-infecting parasites.

In some of the interactions, parasites benefit from the co-infection where as in other interactions they reduce parasites' success. This disrupts the relative infectivity of the parasites, and suggests that observed strain-specific interactions among parasite species may complicate disease dynamics within hosts and also maintain genetic polymorphism in parasite populations.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology.

www.publishing.royalsociety.org/proceedingsb