Do you think that our species is exempt from "kill-the-winner" predator-prey dynamics? (KTW is the colloquial term for the cyclical dynamic by which phages promote community evenness by reducing the numbers of the most abundant bacterial strains.)
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I think the abundance of human pathogens that pop up in over-populated, over-cropped, over-lived areas is a good indication that our population control is out of our hands (and has been for thousands of years)!
Like SARS, if there's a virus that does not infect humans, it has the ability to evolve and quickly jump to humans, especially if there is a greater number of people around. Just like phage that have tropism for specific bacterial species - if there is a great number of that species around the phage, it will eventually evolve mechanisms to invade that new species.
Posted by: Brooke | July 01, 2011 at 08:47 AM