Explanipedia

The impacts of almond pollination on honeybee viral dynamics Open

Nina A. Sokolov, Graham R. Northrup, Lena Wilfert, Mike Boots · 2025

Honeybees provide critical pollination services, including the remarkable annual mass human-mediated intercontinental ‘migration’ where over half of all commercial honeybees in the United States are shipped to California’s Central Valley t…

The shape of waning vaccinal immunity: Implications for control Open

Graham R. Northrup, Mike Boots, Chadi M. Saad-Roy · 2025

The COVID-19 pandemic and current uncertainties about H5N1 influenza underscore the importance of vaccination for both community immunity and to prevent pathogen invasion. While the duration of a fully-immune period is often included in ep…

Superspreading and the evolution of virulence Open

Xander O’Neill, A. R. White, Graham R. Northrup, Chadi M. Saad-Roy, P. Signe White , et al. · 2025

Superspreading, where a small proportion of a population can cause a high proportion of infection transmission, is well known to be important to the epidemiology of a wide range of pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2. However, despite its ubiq…

Superspreading and the evolution of virulence Open

Xander O’Neill, Andy White, Graham R. Northrup, Chadi M. Saad-Roy, P. Signe White , et al. · 2025

Superspreading, where a small proportion of a population can cause a high proportion of infection transmission, is well known to be important to the epidemiology of a wide range of pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2. However, despite its ubiq…

The ghost of infections past: Accounting for heterogeneity in individual infection history improves accuracy in epidemic forecasting Open

Pedro F. Vale, Chadi M. Saad-Roy, Mike Boots · 2025

Variation in infection history is an important but often underappreciated driver of individual variability in responses to infections. Such individual heterogeneity in immune responses, stemming from variable previous exposure to pathogens…

The potential impacts of vector host species fidelity on zoonotic arbovirus transmission Open

Tijani A. Sulaimon, Anthony J. Wood, Michael B. Bonsall, Mike Boots, Jennifer Lord · 2025

The interaction between vector host preference and host availability on vector blood feeding behaviour has important implications for the transmission of vector-borne pathogens. However, to our knowledge, the effect of bias towards feeding…

Avoiding the tragedies of parasite tolerance in Darwinian beekeeping Open

Nina A. Sokolov, Mike Boots, Lewis J. Bartlett · 2025

Bee declines have been partly attributed to the impacts of invasive or emerging parasite outbreaks. For western honeybees, Apis mellifera , major losses are associated with the virus-vectoring mite, Varroa destructor . In response, beekeep…

The evolution of post-infection mortality Open

Chadi M. Saad-Roy, Andy White, Mike Boots · 2024

COVID-19 infections have underlined that there can be substantial impacts on health after recovery, including elevated mortality. While such post-infection mortality (PIM) is clearly widespread, we do not yet have any understanding of its …

Multispecies interactions and the community context of the evolution of virulence Open

Claire Evensen, Andrew White, Mike Boots · 2024

Pairwise host–parasite relationships are typically embedded in broader networks of ecological interactions, which have the potential to shape parasite evolutionary trajectories. Understanding this ‘community context’ of pathogen evolution …

Impact of waning immunity against SARS-CoV-2 severity exacerbated by vaccine hesitancy Open

Chadi M. Saad-Roy, Sinead E. Morris, Mike Boots, Rachel E. Baker, Bryan Lewis , et al. · 2024

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has generated a considerable number of infections and associated morbidity and mortality across the world. Recovery from these infections, combined with the onset of large-scale vaccination, have led to rapidly-chan…

Immune interactions and heterogeneity in transmission drives the pathogen‐mediated invasion of grey squirrels in the <span>UK</span> Open

Elizabeth A. Howell, Andrew White, Peter W. W. Lurz, Mike Boots · 2024

Mathematical models highlighted the importance of pathogen‐mediated invasion, with the replacement of red squirrels by squirrelpox virus (SQPV) carrying grey squirrels in the UK, a well‐known example. In this study, we combine new epidemio…

The evolution of parasite virulence under targeted culling and harvesting in wildlife and livestock Open

Xander O’Neill, Andy White, Mike Boots · 2023

There is a clear need to understand the effect of human intervention on the evolution of infectious disease. In particular, culling and harvesting of both wildlife and managed livestock populations are carried out in a wide range of manage…

Reservoir host immunology and life history shape virulence evolution in zoonotic viruses Open

Cara E. Brook, Carly Rozins, Sarah Guth, Mike Boots · 2023

The management of future pandemic risk requires a better understanding of the mechanisms that determine the virulence of emerging zoonotic viruses. Meta-analyses suggest that the virulence of emerging zoonoses is correlated with but not co…

Epidemiological impacts of post-infection mortality Open

Chadi M. Saad-Roy, Simon A. Levin, Bryan T. Grenfell, Mike Boots · 2023

Infectious diseases may cause some long-term damage to their host, leading to elevated mortality even after recovery. Mortality due to complications from so-called ‘long COVID’ is a stark illustration of this potential, but the impacts of …

Spatially structured host genetic diversity leads to the evolution of local specialization Open

Elisa Visher, Anisha Ali, Jonathan Barajas, Sehar Masud, Annika McBride , et al. · 2023

Host heterogeneity and spatial population structure each influence parasite evolution but may also interact because space structures contacts between host types. Here, we experimentally evolve granulosis virus in microcosms of its Plodia i…

Extending eco‐evolutionary theory with oligomorphic dynamics Open

Sébastien Lion, Akira Sasaki, Mike Boots · 2023

Understanding the interplay between ecological processes and the evolutionary dynamics of quantitative traits in natural systems remains a major challenge. Two main theoretical frameworks are used to address this question, adaptive dynamic…

Codes for "Epidemiological impacts of post-infection mortality'' Open

Chadi M. Saad-Roy, Simon A. Levin, Bryan T. Grenfell, Mike Boots · 2023

This contains codes to generate the figures.

Evolutionary Dynamics of Hyperparasites Open

Graham R. Northrup, Andy White, Steven R. Parratt, Carly Rozins, Anna‐Liisa Laine , et al. · 2023

Extending eco-evolutionary theory with oligomorphic dynamics Open

Sébastien Lion, Akira Sasaki, Mike Boots · 2022

Understanding the interplay between ecological processes and the evolutionary dynamics of quantitative traits in natural systems remains a major challenge. Two main theoretical frameworks are used to address this question, adaptive dynamic…

Multimodal pathogen transmission as a limiting factor in host distribution Open

Lawrence H. Uricchio, Emily L. Bruns, Michael E. Hood, Mike Boots, Janis Antonovics · 2022

Theoretical models suggest that infectious diseases could play a substantial role in determining the spatial extent of host species, but few studies have collected the empirical data required to test this hypothesis. Pathogens that sterili…

Spatially structured eco-evolutionary dynamics in a host-pathogen interaction render isolated populations vulnerable to disease Open

Layla Höckerstedt, Elina Numminen, Ben Ashby, Mike Boots, Anna Norberg , et al. · 2022

The evolution of host resistance to a virus is determined by resources, historical contingency, and time scale Open

Elisa Visher, Hannah Mahjoub, Khadija Soufi, Nilbert Pascual, Vivian Hoang , et al. · 2022

Hosts can often evolve resistance to parasites (and other stressors), but such resistance is generally thought to be constrained by trade-offs with other traits. These trade-offs determine the host’s optimal resistance strategy and whether…

Multimodal disease transmission as a limiting factor for the spatial extent of a host plant Open

Lawrence H. Uricchio, Emily L. Bruns, Michael E. Hood, Mike Boots, Janis Antonovics · 2022

Theoretical models suggest that infectious diseases could play a substantial role in determining species’ ranges, but few studies have collected the empirical data required to test this hypothesis. Pathogens that sterilize their hosts or s…

Multimorph Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics in Structured Populations Open

Sébastien Lion, Mike Boots, Akira Sasaki · 2022

Our understanding of the evolution of quantitative traits in nature is still limited by the challenge of including realistic trait distributions in the context of frequency-dependent selection and ecological feedbacks. We extend to class-s…

Bats host the most virulent—but not the most dangerous—zoonotic viruses Open

Sarah Guth, Nardus Mollentze, Katia Renault, Daniel G. Streicker, Elisa Visher , et al. · 2022

Significance The clear need to mitigate zoonotic risk has fueled increased viral discovery in specific reservoir host taxa. We show that a combination of viral and reservoir traits can predict zoonotic virus virulence and transmissibility …

Antigenic escape selects for the evolution of higher pathogen transmission and virulence Open

Akira Sasaki, Sébastien Lion, Mike Boots · 2021

The Evolutionary Dynamics of Hyperparasites Open

Graham R. Northrup, Steven R. Parratt, Carly Rozins, Anna‐Liisa Laine, Mike Boots · 2021

Evolutionary theory has typically focused on pairwise interactions, such as those between hosts and parasites, with relatively little work on more complex interactions including hyperparasites: parasites of parasites. Hyperparasites are co…

Optimizing COVID-19 control with asymptomatic surveillance testing in a university environment Open

Cara E. Brook, Graham R. Northrup, Alexander J. Ehrenberg, Jennifer A. Doudna, Mike Boots · 2021

The high proportion of transmission events derived from asymptomatic or presymptomatic infections make SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent in COVID-19, difficult to control through the traditional non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) of sym…

The Evolution of Host Specialization in an Insect Pathogen Open

Elisa Visher, Lawrence H. Uricchio, Lewis J. Bartlett, Nicole DeNamur, Aren Yarcan , et al. · 2021

Niche breadth coevolution between biotic partners underpins theories of diversity and co-existence and influences patterns of disease emergence and transmission in host-parasite systems. Despite these broad implications, we still do not fu…

Reservoir host immunology and life history shape virulence evolution in zoonotic viruses Open

Cara E. Brook, Carly Rozins, Sarah Guth, Mike Boots · 2021

The management of future pandemic risk requires a better understanding of the mechanisms that determine the virulence of emerging zoonotic viruses. Meta-analyses suggest that the virulence of emerging zoonoses is correlated with but not co…

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