Testing the "Red King": The maintenance of functional diversity of hosts and parasites

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All organisms are challenged by a wide range of infectious organisms including bacteria, viruses, fungi and various worms. In response they have developed a wide range of resistance mechanisms ranging from thicker gut walls through to complex immune systems. When we look at populations of hosts we are struck by the differences between individuals in their relative resistance to their various diseases. This diversity is found in natural populations but also characteristic of human and farm populations. Furthermore there is considerable variation in the infectivity of different strains of the hosts various parasites. All of this variation is important because it allows rapid evolution in response to treatment and environmental change. It also allows populations to be resilient and affects the rate of transmission of a disease through a host population. However we do not know what processes generate and maintain the diversity in the first place. This proposal combines theory with experiments in the laboratory using microbes and their diseases and looks at a natural bacteria and its phage in order to try to understand what processes underlie the diversity. If we can understand these processes we will be able to manage disease in populations and potentially better protect species that are under threat of disease.