Nature Communications (Jun 2018)

Transmission-clearance trade-offs indicate that dengue virulence evolution depends on epidemiological context

  • Rotem Ben-Shachar,
  • Katia Koelle

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04595-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 11

Abstract

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Theory predicts that pathogens will evolve towards intermediate virulence, yet the necessary trade-offs invoked by this theory have rarely been demonstrated empirically. Here, the authors show that dengue virus dynamics exhibit a trade-off between transmission and clearance rates.