Elin Falla (@elinfalla.bsky.social)

My first first-author paper is out in @PLOSCompBiol! Read about why including aphid vector behavior is important for modelling NPT plant virus transmission, in particular when the virus is manipulating plant host phenotype: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/a…

loading . . .

Why aphid virus retention needs more attention: Modelling aphid behaviour and virus manipulation in non-persistent plant virus transmission Author summary Plant viruses can cause devastating disease epidemics. Non-persistently transmitted viruses are almost always vectored (transmitted between plants) by aphids. Experiments show virus infection can affect whether aphids are attracted to plants (by altering how infected plants ‘smell’), as well as whether aphids settle for an extended feed after a brief initial probe (by altering how infected plants ‘taste’). Since virus transmission requires an individual aphid to briefly probe an infected plant followed by one or more healthy plant(s), this strongly affects disease transmission. However, most studies exploring virus epidemics do not account for how aphid feeding behaviour affects how long an aphid holds the virus for, or that an aphid could infect multiple healthy plants before losing the virus. We use mathematical modelling to dissect how these aspects of aphid feeding behaviour affect virus transmission, particularly when viruses manipulate the ‘smell’ and ‘taste’ of plants. We show how previous studies, by omitting crucial aspects of aphid feeding behaviour, underestimate how viruses can promote their own transmission. We also highlight that there are very few experimental studies exploring the number of plants an aphid with the virus can consecutively infect, which is a key parameter affecting the severity of epidemics. https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012479