Evolution of pathogen virulence under selective predation: a construction method to find eco-evolutionary cycles.

We investigate eco-evolutionary cycles in the joint dynamics of pathogen virulence and predator population density when hosts carrying virulent infections are exposed to increased risk of predation. We introduce a new technique to find trade-off functions under which the model exhibits limit cycles; this technique provides a constructive proof that the system is able to generate limit cycles, and can be applied to other eco-evolutionary models as well. We also study a concrete example to confirm that eco-evolutionary cycles occur in a significant part of the parameter space and to briefly explore other evolutionary outcomes in the same model.