Alternate Evolutionary Trajectories Following a Pathogen Spillover into a Novel Host: The Case of Mycoplasma gallisepticum in House Finches (Haemorhous mexicanus)

Few studies exist in which host-pathogen systems have been studied within months of their emergence and followed for many years, making it possible to test the virulence-transmission hypothesis and to determine if a pathogen becomes more or less virulent over time. Around 1994 the bacterium Mycoplasma gallisepticum jumped from poultry to House Finches (Haemorhous mexicanus) and other wild birds in the US. Bacterial virulence increased as it rapidly spread across eastern North America, causing House Finch abundance to decline by half. The new M. gallisepticum variants that eventually colonized the western US had lost a substantial part of their genome and had a reduced virulence. In our study, initial survival of M. gallisepticum was lower in eastern US than in western US isolates, and birds with a higher bacterial load showed higher transmission rates, but this relationship differed between birds inoculated with eastern versus western isolates. Western isolates were less pathogenic (similar pathogen loads caused less-severe disease) than eastern isolates and had lower transmission rates for a given bacterial load. Our study provides insights into how pathogens spreading after a host shift and across a continent may respond to novel evolutionary pressures in diverse ways.