Evolution of virulence under intensive farming: salmon lice increase skin lesions and reduce host growth in salmon farms

• DOI: 10.1111/jeb.13082
• Publication Date: 2017-04-05T16:39:10Z
• Authors: M. S. Ugelvik; A. Skorping; O. Moberg; A. Mennerat
• Keywords: Lepeophtheirus

Parasites rely on resources from a host and are selected to achieve an optimal combination of transmission virulence. Human-induced changes in parasite ecology, such as intensive farming hosts, might not only favour increased abundances, but also alter the selection acting parasites lead life-history evolution. The trade-off between virulence could be affected by practices high density use antiparasitic drugs, which some host-parasite systems. To test this, we therefore infected Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) smolts with lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) sampled either wild or farmed hosts laboratory experiment. We compared growth skin damage (i.e. proxies for virulence) found that, unfarmed areas, those originating fish were more harmful; they inflicted their reduced relative weight gain greater extent. advocate that evolutionary studies should carried out using animals study species, given current increase food production global experiment