Parasite-parasite interactions!
Climate change and human activities are shifting parasite distributions, and thus causing novel parasite co-occurrences.
Multiple parasites (strains or species) cocirculating within a host population often cause co-infections, that is, the simultaneous infection of an individual host by multiple parasites.
Co-circulating parasites can interact at both the host individual and host population scales, with crucial implications for transmission, host health, host–parasite evolution and disease management. However, interactions at one scale are often investigated without considering the other.
The researchers present a conceptual framework that explicitly recognises the two scales of parasite–parasite interactions. This framework identifies multiple pathways by which parasites interact and highlights the ecological, epidemiological, and evolutionary consequences of these interactions.
https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(25)00352-0
