Abstract

Novel testing of parasite virulence evolution theory

In an increasingly post antibiotic era where parasite evolution is outpacing our capacity to develop new cures, to tackle AMR , I argue we cant keep throwing medicine at it, we need to understand it. And crucially we need to identify common factors in the evolution of the harm parasites cause their hosts (termed virulence) to give us more predictive power and therefore the opportunity to develop evolution-prrof management strategies. I am broadly interested in social evolution and virulence in parasites, and I will firstly discuss my experimental evolution work with bacteriophage that tests fundamental virulence-transmission trade-off theory. Secondly, as a new lecturer in the department, I’d like to take this opportunity to float my new research ideas for studying virulence evolution in real-time in complex microbial communities (such as the gut), where currently we have little idea about how virulence evolves in these co-evolutionary arm-races.