title: The epidemiology and evolution of parasite transmission through cannibalism.
abstract: Cannibalism is a widespread behavior, and evidence is abundant for transmission from infected victims to susceptible cannibals in many parasite-host systems. Current theory suggests that cannibalism generally impedes disease spread, because each victim is usually consumed by a single cannibal. Thus, cannibalism merely transfers pathogens from one individual to another without spreading infections to additional hosts. This assumes that cannibalism is the only mode of transmission and that the host population is homogenous. However, host developmental stages are a key determinant of both cannibal-victim and host-pathogen interactions. We suggest that multiple modes of pathogen transmission can interact through host stage structure. We show theoretically that cannibalism can enhance disease spread by consistently transferring infections from low quality to high quality hosts that are more infectious via horizontal transmission. We review empirical evidence for the generality of key conditions required for this process, and analyze the implications for the evolution of transmission through cannibalism. More generally, our theory promotes the consideration of multiple transmission pathways when studying parasite-host systems, and advances a useful intuition for assessing whether or not such pathways may be mutually augmentative.
authors.affiliation: Department of Entomology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel.
authors.forename: Asaf
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sadeh
authors.affiliation: Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Sciences, College of Marine and Environmental Science, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD 4870, Australia.
authors.forename: Tobin D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Northfield
authors.affiliation: Department of Entomology and Nematology and the Center for Population Biology, University of California, Davis, California, 95616, USA.
authors.forename: Jay A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Rosenheim
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002190:Cannibalism; D018445:Infectious Disease Transmission, Vertical / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010271:Parasites
keywords: disease ecology; ecological epidemiology; infectious diseases; population heterogeneity; predation; stage structure; trophic transmission