Different clones of eye flukes interact within the host

What is it about?

Different clones of parasites can differ in their phenotypic traits (e.g. infection success or growth rate). However, when different clones meet in the host, their phenotype is not just an average of individual clonal phenotypes. Instead, clones may compete or, conversely, 'cooperate', facilitating infection or resource acquisition. We infected fish with different clones of eye flukes or mixtures of clones to (1) assess interclonal phenotypic variability and (2) check whether clones interact with each other. As expected, clones differed in their infection success and growth rates. More importantly, we found evidence for both positive and negative interactions between clones.

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Why is it important?

Perhaps the most important conclusion from our study is that there are no simple rules for predicting interactions between clones in the host organism. Each time we should check for certain interactions between certain clones and account for it when studying disease dynamics.