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Title: Bidirectional interactions between host social behaviour and parasites arise through ecological and evolutionary processes
Abstract An animal's social behaviour both influences and changes in response to its parasites. Here we consider these bidirectional links between host social behaviours and parasite infection, both those that occur from ecological vs evolutionary processes. First, we review how social behaviours of individuals and groups influence ecological patterns of parasite transmission. We then discuss how parasite infection, in turn, can alter host social interactions by changing the behaviour of both infected and uninfected individuals. Together, these ecological feedbacks between social behaviour and parasite infection can result in important epidemiological consequences. Next, we consider the ways in which host social behaviours evolve in response to parasites, highlighting constraints that arise from the need for hosts to maintain benefits of sociality while minimizing fitness costs of parasites. Finally, we consider how host social behaviours shape the population genetic structure of parasites and the evolution of key parasite traits, such as virulence. Overall, these bidirectional relationships between host social behaviours and parasites are an important yet often underappreciated component of population-level disease dynamics and host–parasite coevolution.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1754872 1755051 2030509 1654609
NSF-PAR ID:
10221732
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Parasitology
Volume:
148
Issue:
3
ISSN:
0031-1820
Page Range / eLocation ID:
274 to 288
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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