BIOL 372 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Parvovirus, American Medical Association, Yellow Fever
Document Summary
Evolution of virulence: transmission from immobile hosts and vaccination. Goals of lecture: to understand why some infectious diseases evolved to be more harmful than others, and how this evolution can be controlled by public health interventions. Pathogen virulence: the inherent harmfulness of an infection organism. Benignity (or benignness): the state of low virulence. Parasitism: an association in which an individual (the parasite) lives in or on another individual (the host) and causes harm to the host. Commensalism: a association in which an individual lives in or on another individual without harming or helping the other individual. (commensalism is best considered a dividing line between parasitsm and mutualism. ) Mutualism: an association that provides fitness benefits to both interacting individuals. Symbioses: sometimes used synonymously with mutualism; sometimes used more broadly to encompass the entire spectrum of intimate associations from parasitism through mutualism. -benign coexistence with hosts was presumed to be the most favorable evolutionary outcome for both host and parasite.
