Work Package 2

Education & Research Units

 

Climate & Environmental Change

 

Food, Environment & Health

 

Natural Hazards & Risks

 

Natural Resources

 

Sustainable Land Use

 

Integrative Elements

 

Research Platforms

 

Scientific Services

 

Education & Outreach

 

The trypanosome Crithidia bombi that causes failure of colony foundation in bumblebees (size is about 10 µm)

Terrestrial pathogen-animal interactions

A major open question in biology with relevance for both basic and applied problems is how and why mechanisms such as meiotic recombination that generate genotypic diversity evolve and persist. One of the leading theories is based on the co-evolutionary dynamics between host and parasite populations. If true, the existence of such a dynamics has many ramifications for strategies of parasite control, ecosystem management and, not the least, for answering some fundamental questions in biology.

This work package attempts to dissect the role of genetic diversity on host-parasite co-evolution using a combination of theoretical (work package 2A) and experimental (work package 2B) approaches, and terrestrial animal study systems. Specifically it addresses the causes and consequences of neutral and selected genetic variation, as a result of selection, recombination, segregation or migration, for the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of host parasite interactions.