Disease virulence
Brief description
Environmental transmission can select for increased virulence when direct transmission is low. Increasing the efficiency of direct transmission gives rise to an evolutionary bi-stability, with coexistence of different levels of virulence. The overlooked contribution of environmental transmission may explain the curious appearance of high virulence in pathogens that are typically only moderately pathogenic, as observed for avian influenza viruses and cholera.
Key References
- Roche, Benjamin, John M. Drake, Pejman Rohani. 2011. The curse of the Pharaoh revisited: evolutionary bi-stability in environmentally transmitted pathogens. Ecology Letters DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01619.x
