Question

13. Describe two ways a parasitic species could evolve to decrease the likelihood that it will run out of potential hosts.

Answer 1

Parasites harm their host to fulfill their needs.
This damage varies and can occur to host clones as well due to the genetic variation for expression of disease. Now this causes reproduction and genetics variations.
The host clone which suffer less from parasitism will not be harmed and will increase their population.
There are two basic problems with detecting host adaptation or we can say host visibility.
Firstly , if host have lower parasite fitness , this will result in counter adaptation of parasites which will reduce the effectiveness of the host and ultimately making them invisible.
Secondly, when there is interaction between two organism, it may or may not be beneficial to both (considering one as a host here) so it also depends on the genotype where one triad is expressed and other is not.