Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America.
PLoS Biol. 2018 Feb 7;16(2):e2004608. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2004608. eCollection 2018 Feb.
The complexity of host-parasite interactions makes it difficult to predict how host-parasite systems will respond to climate change. In particular, host and parasite traits such as survival and virulence may have distinct temperature dependencies that must be integrated into models of disease dynamics. Using experimental data from Daphnia magna and a microsporidian parasite, we fitted a mechanistic model of the within-host parasite population dynamics. Model parameters comprising host aging and mortality, as well as parasite growth, virulence, and equilibrium abundance, were specified by relationships arising from the metabolic theory of ecology. The model effectively predicts host survival, parasite growth, and the cost of infection across temperature while using less than half the parameters compared to modeling temperatures discretely. Our results serve as a proof of concept that linking simple metabolic models with a mechanistic host-parasite framework can be used to predict temperature responses of parasite population dynamics at the within-host level.
宿主-寄生虫相互作用的复杂性使得很难预测宿主-寄生虫系统将如何应对气候变化。特别是，宿主和寄生虫的特征，如生存能力和毒力，可能具有不同的温度依赖性，这些依赖性必须整合到疾病动力学模型中。我们使用大型溞和一种微孢子虫寄生虫的实验数据，拟合了一个宿主内寄生虫种群动态的机制模型。模型参数包括宿主衰老和死亡率，以及寄生虫生长、毒力和平衡丰度，这些参数是通过生态代谢理论产生的关系来确定的。与离散模拟温度相比，该模型使用不到一半的参数就能有效地预测宿主的存活率、寄生虫的生长以及感染的代价，而且能在整个温度范围内准确预测。我们的研究结果证明了将简单的代谢模型与机制性的宿主-寄生虫框架联系起来，用于预测宿主内寄生虫种群动态的温度响应是可行的。
