Adaptation and the evolution of parasite virulence in a connected world

Geoff Wild (), Andy Gardner and Stuart A. West
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Geoff Wild: University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada
Andy Gardner: Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, King’s Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK
Stuart A. West: University of Oxford

Nature, 2009, vol. 459, issue 7249, 983-986

Abstract: They are all individuals The conventional view of adaptation is that it operates at the level of the individual organism, but recent observations of the evolution of virulence in viruses infecting moths and bacteria in spatially structured populations (where dispersal is limited) have been interpreted as examples of group selection. Wild et al. here extend previous models mathematically to show that the effect of dispersal on parasite virulence can be understood as an individual-level adaptation by the parasite entirely within the context of kin selection theory.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1038/nature08071

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