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Abstract
Host manipulation is a common parasite strategy to alter host behavior in a manner to enhance parasite fitness usually by increasing the parasite's transmission to the next host. In nature, hosts often harbor multiple parasites with agreeing or conflicting interests over host manipulation. Natural selection might drive such parasites to cooperation, compromise, or sabotage. Sabotage would occur if one parasite suppresses the manipulation of another. Experimental studies on the effect of multi-parasite interactions on host manipulation are scarce, clear experimental evidence for sabotage is elusive. We tested the effect of multiple infections on host manipulation using laboratory-bred copepods experimentally infected with the trophically transmitted tapeworm Schistocephalus solidus. This parasite is known to manipulate its host depending on its own developmental stage. Coinfecting parasites with the same aim enhance each other's manipulation but only after reaching infectivity. If the coinfecting parasites disagree over host manipulation, the infective parasite wins this conflict: the noninfective one has no effect. The winning (i.e., infective) parasite suppresses the manipulation of its noninfective competitor. This presents conclusive experimental evidence for both cooperation in and sabotage of host manipulation and hence a proof of principal that one parasite can alter and even neutralize manipulation by another.
Highlights
Parasites can modify their host’s phenotype to their own benefit
Two coinfecting parasites with incompatible aims have a conflict over host manipulation, either because they manipulate in different directions or one parasite manipulates whereas the other one does not manipulate if its interest is best served by the host’s normal behavior
We found significant differences between the behavior of control copepods and copepods singly infected at either infection time point during expected predation suppression
Summary
Parasites can modify their host’s phenotype to their own benefit. Such host manipulation is known from a wide range of both host and parasite taxa (Holmes and Bethel 1972; Poulin and Thomas 1999; Moore 2002, 2013; Poulin 2010), including humans (Flegr 2013). Once the parasite is infective to the host, manipulation increases transmission to that host, for example, by increasing the current host’s predation susceptibility (Holmes and Bethel 1972; Poulin and Thomas 1999; Moore 2002, 2013; Poulin 2010). Dianne et al (2010) experimentally infected gammarids with different stages of an acanthocephalan parasite and found suggestive evidence that the not yet infective stage might have sabotaged manipulation by the infective one. Both studies used wild-caught hosts, which might have encountered various other parasites before. Sabotage may exist but was not stringently shown under experimentally controlled conditions
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