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

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.

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Filed under: Biology on October 29th, 2008