title: The curse of the pharaoh in space: free-living infectious stages and the evolution of virulence in spatially explicit populations.
abstract: The idea that parasites with long-lived infective stages may evolve higher virulence has received considerable attention. This idea is called 'the curse of the pharaoh' because of the hypothesis that the death of Lord Carnavon was caused by very long-lived propagules of a highly virulent infectious disease. Here, we examined the evolution of diseases that transmit via free-living stages in a spatial context. We show that, if virulence evolves independently of transmission, long-lived infective stages can select for higher virulence. There is always the evolution of a finite transmission rate, which becomes higher when the infective stages are shorter lived. When a trade-off occurs between transmission and virulence, we show that there is no evidence for the curse of the pharaoh. Indeed, higher transmission and therefore virulence may be selected for by shorter rather than long-lived infective stages.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Kyushu University Graduate Schools, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan.
authors.forename: Masashi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kamo
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Boots
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D008018:Life Cycle Stages; D008954:Models, Biological; D010271:Parasites / Q000502:physiology*; D010272:Parasitic Diseases / Q000635:transmission*; D012098:Reproduction; D014774:Virulence