Levin B R, Svanborg Edén C
Department of Zoology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 01003.
Parasitology. 1990;100 Suppl:S103-15. doi: 10.1017/s0031182000073054.
Why do parasites kill their hosts? During this past decade, research in three different areas; evolutionary ecology, medical microbiology, and population genetics has provided theory and data that address this and related questions of selection and the evolution and maintenance of parasite virulence. A general theory of parasite-host coevolution and the conditions for selection to favour parasite virulence has been put forth. Considerable advances have been made in elucidating the mechanisms of pathogenicity and inheritance of virulence in bacteria. The population genetic structure and the relationship between pathogenic and non-pathogenic forms has been determined for a number of species of bacteria. We critically review these developments and their implications for questions of selection and the evolution and maintenance of virulence in bacteria. We postulate how selection may operate on specific types of bacterial virulence and present a general protocol to experimentally test hypotheses concerning selection and the evolution of virulence in bacteria.
寄生虫为何会杀死它们的宿主？在过去十年中，进化生态学、医学微生物学和群体遗传学这三个不同领域的研究提供了理论和数据，以解决这个问题以及关于选择、寄生虫毒力的进化与维持的相关问题。一种寄生虫-宿主协同进化的通用理论以及有利于寄生虫毒力选择的条件已经被提出。在阐明细菌致病性机制和毒力遗传方面已经取得了相当大的进展。已经确定了许多细菌物种的群体遗传结构以及致病形式与非致病形式之间的关系。我们批判性地审视了这些进展及其对细菌选择、毒力进化与维持问题的影响。我们假设选择可能如何作用于特定类型的细菌毒力，并提出一个通用方案来通过实验检验关于细菌选择和毒力进化的假设。
