Sickness, sex and selection: How epidemics shape life history and coevolution across populations

Stuart Auld

University of Stirling, Scotland

s.k.auld@stir.ac.uk

Hosts and parasite populations are frequently locked in a coevolutionary struggle over time, and the nature of this coevolution can affect the emergence and decline of epidemics. We know that ecological conditions can shape the nature of evolution, but we are yet to know the extent to which real-world coevolutionary trajectories are hard-wired, shaped by measurable biotic and abiotic ecological variation, and driven by stochastic and thus unpredictable events (e.g., genetic drift). To misquote G E Hutchinson: does the ecological theatre determine the coevolutionary play? We asked this and other interesting questions (we hope) using replicate semi-natural populations of the crustacean, Daphnia magna, and its sterilising bacterial endoparasite, Pasteuria ramosa.

Recent publications:

1. Auld, S.K.J.R., Brand, J. (2017) Environmental variation causes different (co)evolutionary routes to the same adaptive destination across parasite populations. Evolution Letters 1: 245-254

2. Auld, S.K.J.R., Brand, J. (2017) Simulated climate change, epidemic size and host evolution across host-parasite populations. Global Change Biology 23: 5045-5053