Lisa Schwanz has a nice example in her 2008 paper entitled "Chronic parasitic infection alters reproductive output in deer mice."
What about reproductive parasites increasing production of female progeny in arthropods?
It is a large field and there is a lot of good reviews on this topic. However, I though you may like to take a look at the research paper showing the experimental results, for example:
Weeks AR, Stouthamer R: Increased fecundity associated with infection by a Cytophaga-like intracellular bacterium in the predatory mite, Metaseiulus occidentalis.
Proc R Soc Lond B 2003, 271:S193-S195
There you will find references to the reviews to get a more general picture.
Hi! I am also interested in this field. Most literature discuss parasitic manipulation in insects of medical and veterinary importance. I hope these references can help, I think they have some discussions on reproduction. All the best!
Lefe`vre, T., Koella, J.C., Renaud, F., Hurd, H., Biron, D.G., Thomas, F., 2006. New prospectes for research on manipulation of insect vectors by pathogens. PLoS Pathogens 2, 0633–063
Poulin, R., 1995. ‘‘Adaptive’’ change in the behaviour of parasitized animals: a critical review. Int. J. Parasitol. 25, 1371–1383
Lefe`vre T, Thomas F. 2008. Behind the scene, something else is pulling the strings: Emphasizing parasitic manipulation in vector-borne diseases. Infection, Genetics and Evolution. 504–519
Thomas F, Adamo S, Moorec J. 2005. Parasitic manipulation: where are we and where should we go?.Behavioural Processes 68 :185–199
Hamilton JGC & Hurd H. 2002. Parasite manipulation of vector behaviour. In: Lewis, E.E., Campbell, J.F., Sukhdeo, M.V.K. (Eds.), The Behavioural Ecology of Parasites. CABI Publishing, London,UK.
This is a very interesting field indeed. While being relatively well studied in insects, much less is known about occurrence and functioning of such parasites in other arthropods and next to nothing in other animals. Looking at parallelisms would help a lot in understanding the phenomenon...
If we think like rigorous evolutionists than we should say, "yes, as long as the parasite benefits from the host's reproduction". For example, it might be transmitted by sexual contact or it could, like a retrovirus, even be incorporated into the host's genome.
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