Skip to main content
Dryad

Data from: Disease resistance is more costly at younger ages: An explanation for the maintenance of juvenile susceptibility

Data files

Apr 07, 2025 version files 74.48 KB

Abstract

High juvenile susceptibility drives infectious disease epidemics across kingdoms, yet the evolutionary mechanisms that maintain this susceptibility are unclear. We tested the hypothesis that juvenile susceptibility is maintained by high costs of juvenile resistance by quantifying the genetic correlation between host fitness and age-specific innate resistance to a fungal pathogen in a wild plant. We found significant fitness costs associated with disease resistance at juvenile but not at adult host stages, and show that the magnitude of these juvenile resistance costs are sufficient to prevent the spread of juvenile resistance in models. Our results provide the first direct evidence that costs of resistance decrease with host age, and provide an explanation for the maintenance of epidemiologically important juvenile susceptibility in natural populations.