Hello!
Apparently I do not have the grasp on the Trade-off Model I thought I had and I found myself trying to define it without much success. Anyone have a better definition than “the virulence of the pathogen promote an increase in the secondary infections brought on by the primary infection”? Is that it or am I completely missing it? Thanks for any help.
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Failed to mention-does it have anything to do with host mortality??
e. In the absence of parasite evolution, will virulence increase/decrease as a result of host selection for reduced costs of parasitism? Explain your answer.
I know that it is decrease, but why??
For some reason I can’t find the explanation as to what this question really means. I had a problem figuring it out the first time, one would think I would have written it down, but I can’t find it.
Is everybody studying or what???
The trade off model describes that a pathogen must be virulent enough to be transmitted to other hosts, but not so virulent that it kills the host before transmission occurs.
When in the absence of parasite evolution, virulence decrease as a result of host selection for reduced costs of parasitism because the host will evolve to defy the pathogen’s defenses and the pathogen will not evolve new defenses.
Does this help?
Yes, it helps a lot. I was thinking that your tradeoff answer had more to do with the old and new paradigm. Awesome, thank you!
Yes, thanks I was wondering about the trade-off model too. It seemed a little confusing, but you cleared up the confusion. Thanks!
Thanks for the help on the trade off models!!