{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"institution":[{"name":"bioRxiv"}],"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,22]],"date-time":"2026-05-22T16:05:39Z","timestamp":1779465939311,"version":"3.53.1"},"posted":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,19]]},"group-title":"Ecology","reference-count":51,"publisher":"openRxiv","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,19]],"date-time":"2026-05-19T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1779148800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/about\/FAQ#license"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000057","name":"National Institute of General Medical Sciences","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["R35 GM137975-01"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["R35 GM137975-01"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000057","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100006990","name":"Jeffress Trust","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100006990","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"name":"NSF Research Training Grant","award":["2021791"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2021791"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,19]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                <jats:p>\n                  A host\u2019s diet can alter the course of parasite infection. This is especially true of trophic parasites, which a host acquires through feeding. While a large body of work attests to the role of diet in the spread of disease within-hosts, diet can also impact host density and encounter rate with parasites, both of which are expected to modify disease dynamics. When parasites are acquired through feeding, epidemics may be larger and more severe on high-quality diets if these diets support a higher density of hosts that feed more and thus ingest more parasites. Alternately, epidemics may be more severe on low-quality diets if malnourishment decreases hosts\u2019 ability to resist disease. To differentiate these hypothesized effects of diet on disease, we quantified individual infections and epidemic dynamics for the natural microsporidian parasite\n                  <jats:italic>Nematocida ironsii<\/jats:italic>\n                  infecting its nematode host\n                  <jats:italic>Caenorhabditis elegans<\/jats:italic>\n                  . We measured feeding rate, parasite transmission, and host fitness across three bacterial diets that vary in quality and elicit distinct feeding behaviors in\n                  <jats:italic>C. elegans<\/jats:italic>\n                  . We found that low-quality diets reduced feeding rate, which corresponded to reduced acquisition of parasite spores. However, these diet-mediated differences in parasite acquisition did not directly map onto fitness consequences: hosts eating the poor-quality diet had similar reductions in fitness to those on higher quality diets. During epidemics, a combination of increased parasite acquisition and higher population growth rates resulted in higher parasite abundance for hosts on high-quality diets. Our work underscores the importance of considering both individual- and population-level impacts acting in concert to determine how diet affects the spread of infectious disease.\n                <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.64898\/2026.05.15.725575","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,19]],"date-time":"2026-05-19T10:40:16Z","timestamp":1779187216000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Diet alters epidemic size and timing in a trophically-transmitted parasite"],"prefix":"10.64898","author":[{"given":"Juliana","family":"Jiranek","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Virginia Department of Biology, Charlottesville, VA, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Allyson","family":"Motter","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Virginia Department of Biology, Charlottesville, VA, USA"},{"name":"Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Richmond, VA, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Neha","family":"Channamraju","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Virginia Department of Biology, Charlottesville, VA, USA"},{"name":"National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, MD, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ean","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Virginia Department of Biology, Charlottesville, VA, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Tessa","family":"Batterton","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Virginia Department of Biology, Charlottesville, VA, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Amanda","family":"Gibson","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Virginia Department of Biology, Charlottesville, VA, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"54368","reference":[{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1002\/ecy.2503"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1098\/rstb.1981.0005"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/S0031182000055360"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.ppat.1004583"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"16144","DOI":"10.1038\/nmicrobiol.2016.144","article-title":"Cell-to-cell spread of microsporidia causes Caenorhabditis elegans organs to form syncytia","volume":"1","year":"2016","journal-title":"Nature microbiology"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1098\/rspb.2003.2657"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1461-0248.2006.00905.x"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0007545"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.9","first-page":"378","article-title":"glmmTMB Balances Speed and Flexibility Among Packages for Zero-inflated Generalized Linear Mixed Modeling","volume":"9","year":"2017","journal-title":"The R Journal"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1046\/j.1461-0248.2003.00544.x"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1002\/ecy.1905"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/1365-2656.12363"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/ele.12229"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1890\/0012-9658(2000)081[0201:CQRQFC]2.0.CO;2"},{"key":"2026052208250569000_2026.05.15.725575v1.15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Davenport, E. 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