Infection intensity and infectivity of the tick-borne pathogen Borrelia afzelii.
The 'trade-off' hypothesis for virulence evolution assumes that between-host transmission rate is a positive and saturating function of pathogen exploitation and virulence, but there are as yet few tests of this assumption, in particular for vector-borne pathogens. Here, I show that the infectivity (probability of transmission) of the tick-borne bacterium Borrelia afzelii from two of its natural r
