Evolution and emergence of plant viruses

Document downloaded from: This paper must be cited as: The final publication is available at Copyright Additional Information http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-800098-4.00003-9 http://hdl.handle.net/10251/58029 Elsevier (according to Zetoc) Elena Fito, SF.; Fraile, A.; García-Arena, F. (2014). Evolution and emergence of plant viruses. Advances in Virus Research. (88):161-191. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-8000984.00003-9 ! 1! EVOLUTION AND EMERGENCE OF PLANT VIRUSES Santiago F. Elena,*,+ Aurora Fraile,# and Fernando García-Arenal#1 *Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas, CSIC-UPV, Campus UPV CPI 8E, 46022 València, Spain +The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe NM 87501, USA #Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas, UPM-INIA, and ETSI Agrónomos, UPM, Campus de Montegancedo, Pozuelo de Alarcón, 28223 Madrid, Spain 1 Corresponding autor: fernando.garciaar[email protected] Running title: Plant virus evolution and emergence Key words: Virus evolution, virus emergence, virus ecology, host adaptation, across host trade-offs, antagonistic pleiotropy, epistasis ! 2! 1 Introduction 1.1 Phases on Virus Emergence 2 Phase I. Encounter of New Hosts or New Conditions 2.1 Ecological Factors Favoring Emergence 2.2 Host Jumps and Among Host Trade-offs 2.3 Antagonistic Pleiotropy as a Cause of Among-Host Trade-offs 3 Phase II. Virus Adaptation to the New Host 3.1 Factors Modulating Host Adaptation: Distribution of Mutational Effects and Epistasis. 3.2 Evasion, Suppression and Overcoming Host Defenses 3.3 Within-Host Evolutionary Dynamics: Genetic Drift and Metapopulation Dynamics 3.4 Mixed Infections and Among-Virus Interactions 4 Phase III. Long-Term Changes in Virus Epidemiology 4.1 Basic Reproductive Rate and Epidemics Dynamics 4.2 Host Competence and Transmission Rates 4.3 Virus Manipulation of Vector Life History 5 Conclusion: Gaps in Understanding Plant Virus Emergence ABSTRACT Viruses are common agents of plant infectious diseases. During last decades, worldwide agriculture production has been compromised by a series of epidemics caused by new viruses that spilled over from reservoir species or by new variants of classic viruses that show new pathogenic and epidemiological properties. Virus emergence has been generally associated with ecological change or with intensive agronomical practices. However, the complete picture is much more complex since the viral populations constantly evolve and adapt to their new hosts and vectors. The ! 3! present review puts emergence of plant viruses into the framework of evolutionary ecology, genetics and epidemiology. We will stress that viral emergence begins with the stochastic transmission of preexisting genetic variants from the reservoir to the new host, whose fate depends on their fitness on each hosts, followed by adaptation to new hosts or vectors, and finalizing with an efficient epidemiological spread. ! 4! 1. INTRODUCTION In the last two decades evidence has been growing on the increasing incidence of infectious diseases of humans, domestic and wild animals, and plants, due to the appearance of new pathogens or to the resurgence of previously described ones (Anderson et al. 2004; Woolhouse, 2002). This is at the basis of the interest in emerging pathogens, which can be defined as “the causative agents of infectious diseases whose incidence is increasing following its appearance in a new host population or whose incidence is increasing in an existing host population as a result of long-term changes in its underlying epidemiology“ (Woolhouse & Dye, 2001), . Emergence is often accompanied by altered pathogenesis resulting in increased disease severity (Anderson et al., 2004; Cleaveland et al., 2007). Viruses are the major taxonomic group of emergent pathogens of humans, wildlife and plants, causing in all three host classes just under half of reported emergent diseases (Anderson et al., 2004; Dobson & Foufopoulos, 2001; Taylor et al., 2001). The high socio-economic impact of emergent infectious diseases has motivated research efforts to disentangle the complex causes of pathogen emergence. The goal of this review is to analyze what is known about the drivers of plant virus emergence. 1.1. Phases of Virus Emergence The causes favoring emergence are complex. Jones (2009) describes up to nine different scenarios favoring plant virus emergence, which can be summarized into four groups: i) changes in the host plant and/or virus ecology, ii) changes in the genetic composition of the host populations, iii) changes in the genetic composition of the virus population, and iv) in the case of vectored viruses, changes in the ecology and/or genetic composition of the vector. Emerging viruses have their origin in host species or populations in which they are well established, which play the role of reservoir hosts during emergence. Spread from the reservoir into a new environment (including the ! 5! host as a key component of a parasite’s environment), and establishing productive infections and effective between-host transmission mechanisms, are steps required for emergence to occur. Thus, factors driving emergence may be grouped according to a temporal schedule (Elena, 2011; Elena et al., 2011): in a first phase (Phase I), the virus must jump from the reservoir population to infect individuals of the same host species in a new ecological environment or of a new species. Host jumps, or pathogen spillovers, requires the contact between host populations, which may be favored by changes in the ecology of host, vectors or/and virus. In a second phase (Phase II), the virus must adapt to the new host or environment so that infections are productive enough to allow sustained transmission between individuals of the new host, i.e., infection in the new host or environment becomes independent of spillovers from the reservoir. Last, in a third phase (Phase III), the epidemiology of the virus must change to optimize between-host transmission in the new host population, what often requires adaptation to new vector species or new modes of transmission. This review is organized according to these three phases. Knowledge on the ecological changes favoring between-host contacts resulting in spillovers, i.e., on the first step of emergence during Phase I, derives mostly from a posteriori reconstructions after emergence has occurred. This is also the case for changes in virus/vector ecology resulting in new epidemiological dynamics in the novel environment; experimental evidence on these issues is scarce. On the contrary, knowledge on virus evolvability to adapt to a new host, and on the factors that favor or constrain host adaptation, often derives from experimental evolution analyses specifically aimed at predicting what traits conditioning virus evolution will favor or hinder emergence, regardless that the experimental system is or not an emergent virus. ! 6! 2. PHASE I. VIRUS ENCOUNTER OF NEW HOSTS OR NEW CONDITIONS 2.1. Ecological Factors Favoring Emergence According to the definition of emergence given above, viruses that emerge in one host necessarily have their origin in another host, or reservoir. Thus, ecological factors must favor the contact between the reservoir and the new host populations for a spillover to occur, as a first step eventually leading to emergence. It is considered that human activity associated with trade, agriculture or, more generally, with the anthropization of wild ecosystems, will favor host encounters and spillovers, what has been termed pathogen pollution (Anderson et al., 2004). Ecological factors associated to human activity and favoring virus emergence, can be split into two broad categories; simplification of ecosystems and increased connectivity between host and virus populations, including the introduction of new hosts, new viruses or new vectors into a geographical region. Ecosystem simplification The shrinkage of the area occupied by natural ecosystems in favor of the more simple agroecosystems has been considered for a long time to favor plant disease emergence: a classical concept in Plant Pathology states that ecological simplification associated with agriculture favors the appearance of new diseases in crops, as well as their incidence and severity, i.e., disease emergence. Specifically, three factors are considered to have a major role on disease emergence in agricultural systems: (i) the reduced species diversity of agroecosystems as compared with neighboring natural ecosystems, (ii) the reduced genetic diversity of crops as compared with wild populations of the same or related species, and (iii) the higher host density (Burdon & Chilvers, 1982; Thresh, 1982). Support for these hypotheses is scant, and derives ! 7! mostly from circumstantial or historical evidence (Stukenbrock & McDonald, 2008). Current declines in biodiversity are at the root of a renewed interest on the relationship between biodiversity and disease risk (Keesing et al., 2010). Two major hypotheses, representing extremes of a continuum, relate biodiversity to disease risk. The “Amplification Effect” hypothesis predicts that diversity will be positively correlated with disease risk, as it will result in increased abundance of reservoirs for a focal host. The “Dilution Effect” hypothesis predicts a negative correlation between biodiversity and disease risk, as a reduction in diversity could result in an increased abundance of the focal host species facilitating disease transmission (Keesing et al., 2006). Hence, the effects of diversity on disease risk would be related to the host range of the pathogen. A recent study has analyzed the relationship between biodiversity and disease risk in the wild pepper or chiltepin, Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum, in Mexico (Pagán et al., 2012). This species has a local economical relevance, as its fruits are harvested in wild populations, plants are tolerated or favored in anthropic habitats, and, recently, its cultivation has started in small home gardens or family plots (GonzálezJara et al., 2011). Analyses of chiltepin populations growing in habitats with different levels of human intervention (wild, tolerated and cultivated populations) within a large geographic area in Mexico showed that increased human intervention was associated with a reduction of the genetic diversity of chiltepin populations (González-Jara et al., 2011), and with an increase of both virus infection risk and disease risk (Pagán et al., 2012). The main predictor of disease risk was the species diversity of the habitat, followed by the genetic diversity of the focal host when only populations in anthropic habitats were considered, results thus agreeing with the dilution effect hypothesis (Fig. 1). Interestingly, a decrease in biodiversity was associated to an increased risk of infection by two specialist viruses, the begomoviruses Pepper golden mosaic virus and Pepper huasteco yellow vein virus, while the risk of infection by the generalist virus Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) was not affected by biodiversity (Pagán et al. 2012; Rodelo-Urrego et al., 2013). A further result of this work is that the fraction of ! 8! begomovirus-infected plants that developed macroscopic symptoms was higher in cultivated than in wild chiltepin populations, indicating a higher severity of infections in agricultural environments whose causes have not been determined (Pagán et al. 2012; Rodelo-Urrego et al., 2013). The relationship between biodiversity and disease risk has also been analyzed in Cereal yellow dwarf virus (CYDV) and Barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV). These luteoviruses infect many species of grasses, and have been the object of detailed experimental studies on their effects in wild grassland ecosystems in the west of the USA. Most published results are compatible with the amplification effect hypothesis, although the dilution effect hypothesis is also supported, depending on the composition of the species assemblage analyzed. Although generalists, CYDV and BYDV show partial host specialization, as they multiply to different levels in different grass species, which also differ in their ability to support the populations of the aphid vectors and in their competence as sources for virus transmission. These traits, together with the highly specific interaction between virus and aphid species for transmission, explain the effect of species composition on infection risk, and underline the complexities of virus ecology (Borer et al., 2009, 2010; Hall et al., 2010; Malmstrom et al., 2005a, b; Power & Mitchell, 2004; Power et al., 2011). Increased connectivity between virus and host populations Human activities may result in the increased connectivity between host plant populations, and between virus and host populations, resulting in the emergence of new diseases. One way of establishing new connections between populations is the introduction of new host plant species, either cultivated or wild, and new viruses or their vectors, into geographical areas in which they were not present before. Host introductions are deliberate in the case of crops. However, the introduction of wild, potentially invasive, plants, and the introduction of viruses and vectors, is most often a side effect of translocation of plants and plant products, due to trade, or due to human movements. Introductions have been known for a long time to be factors in virus ! 15! implications for viral emergence. First, it introduces a degree of uncertainty: knowing the effect of a mutation in a given host tells us very little, or nothing, about what would be its effect in an alternative host. Second, the likelihood of host specialization would be proportional to the extent by which the G×E component is generated by antagonistic pleiotropy. Third, the fact that a reduction in genetic variance for fitness also contributes significantly to generate a G×E component implies that genetic drift becomes important relative to natural selection during viral evolution, thus making the process of adaptation to a new host harder. Given the high mutation rates characteristic of RNA viruses (Sanjuán et al., 2010), it is highly likely that genomes carry multiple mutations. The way these mutations interact to determine viral fitness is important, for instance, to know if certain genetic combinations will represent more likely evolutionary solutions than others. In terms of quantitative genetics, epistasis is equivalent to the existence of a genotypeby-genotype fitness component (G×G): the fitness effect of a mutation depends on the genetic context wherein it appears. The intensity and type of epistasis shaping the genome of plant RNA viruses has only been explored, quite recently, for pairs of random mutations introduced in TEV genome (Lalić & Elena, 2012a). Likewise to what has been described for other RNA viruses (e.g., Burch & Chao, 2004; Sanjuán et al., 2004b), the average epistasis for TEV is also negative, that is, two deleterious mutations together are less pernicious that what would be expected from their individual effects. Echoing what we commented above to justify the large deleterious effect of individual mutations, the cause for this dominance of negative epistasis is also related with the lack of genetic redundancy characteristic of RNA genomes, with overlapping genes and multifunctional proteins (Elena et al., 2006). Finally, to understand the genetics of viral emergence, it is also pivotal to determine whether epistasis is also host-dependent. Or put in quantitative genetics terms, to test whether a significant epistasis-by-host component (G×G×E) exists. The ! 16! information available on this issue is scarce and limited to a recent study by Lalić & Elena (2012b) using TEV. This study shows that the sign of epistasis among pairs of random mutations depends on the degree of genetic relatedness between the primary host and the alternative ones. This observation suggests that selection more efficient promoting emergence as more distantly related the primary and the new hosts would be. 3.2. Evasion, Suppression and Overcoming Host Defenses An important determinant of the fitness of a virus in a given host is its ability to overcome the defenses of the host. The mechanisms of resistance displayed by plants against viral infections have been reviewed in deep elsewhere (e.g., Carr et al., 2010; Moffet, 2009; Truniger & Aranda, 2009). Overcoming plant resistance by changes in the pathogenicity of viral populations represents a specific and important case of emergence, with tremendous economical consequences since it jeopardizes the success and durability of resistance factors in crops as an anti-viral control strategy. The evolution of viral pathogenicity has also been recently reviewed (Fraile & GarcíaArenal, 2010) and will not be developed in here. Nonetheless, we only want to highlight here that the viral genotypes overcoming resistances are, in general, less fit in susceptible plants than those viruses not overcoming the resistance, meaning that pathogenicity comes associated to a fitness penalty. In the few instances when this cost has been quantified it has been shown to be quite high [Fraile et al., 2011; see García-Arenal & Fraile (2013) for the analysis of other published data]. This cost is, consequently, a specific example of fitness trade-off across hosts that is generated by antagonistic pleiotropy. This trade-off is of agronomic importance, since it makes difficult the fixation in the population of escape mutants, explaining why resistances against viruses have been more durable than those deployed against cellular pathogens (Fraile & García-Arenal, 2010; García-Arenal & McDonald, 2003). In recent years, attention has been drawn to understanding the factors that determine the ! 17! overcoming of host resistances; identifying that virus’ evolutionary potential and the number of required mutations to overcome the resistance are the two main factors (García-Arenal & McDonald, 2003; Janzac et al., 2009). These studies are based in the analysis a posteriori of epidemiological data. The scarce experimental studies about overcoming resistances determined by major genes, dominant or recessive (Palloix et al., 2009), are affected by the difficulty of extrapolating laboratory fitness data to field conditions, since as we mentioned above, fitness depends on the conditions where it is evaluated. Other studies have a different orientation, focusing in the analysis of virus potential to escape from defenses based on RNA silencing. With this aim, it has been evaluated the durability of the resistance against Turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) conferred by transgenic expression in Arabidopsis thaliana of artificial microRNAs (amiRs) specifically designed to be complementary to viral cistron encoding for the RNA silencing suppressor protein of this virus (HC-Pro). In a series of studies in which different TuMV lineages were evolved by serial passages in susceptible or partially resistant plants (De la Iglesia et al., 2012; Lafforgue et al., 2011; Martínez et al., 2012), it was found that the dynamics of overcoming resistance depended on the extent of protection conferred by the amiR, being it faster when the virus evolved in partially resistant plants than when it evolved in totally susceptible plants. Overcoming amiRmediated resistance was always associated to the presence of mutations at any of the 21 positions of the amiR target within HC-Pro. Another interesting observation was that the ancestral genotype of TuMV was detected, by Illumina ultra-deep sequencing, at a noticeable frequency in viral populations replicating in resistant plants (Martínez et al., 2012). This observation has implications for the use of this type of resistance, since it will favor the reversion to the wild type viral genotype in case escape mutations would have a fitness cost in susceptible plants. We do not want to finish this section without mentioning recent studies that specifically simulated the emergence of a new virus, in this case the jump of TEV from ! 18! it primary host, tobacco, to a new one, A. thaliana ecotype Ler-0. The results from this study delineate a picture in which TEV adaptation to the new host is concomitant with a change in the expression of host genes involved in stress response (including SAR and RNA silencing). These genes are significantly underexpressed to levels characteristic for non-infected plants (Agudelo-Romero et al., 2008b). These stress response genes were all overexpressed in plants infected with the ancestral TEV not adapted to A. thaliana (Agudelo-Romero et al., 2008a). Furthermore, when the virus adapted to ecotype Ler-0 was inoculated into other ecotypes, it was observed that the pattern of gene expression was correlated to the symptoms shown by infected plants: genes involved in responses to abiotic stresses and to building new tissues were overexpressed in those ecotypes showing mild symptoms and low levels of virus accumulation, whereas genes involved in defenses against pathogens were overexpressed in those ecotypes showing strong symptoms (Hillung et al., 2012). This results being confirmed with other viral systems, would help to conclude that natural selection would optimize viral fitness in a new host by making the virus invisible by the plant defense systems. 3.3. Within-Host Evolutionary Dynamics: Genetic Drift and Metapopulation Dynamics The spatial structure within a plant of the viral population may affect the relative contribution of genetic drift and natural selection to evolution and, henceforth, the capacity to adapt to new hosts. The process of infection and colonization of plants by viruses was the subject of very detailed studies from the 1950 to the 1980 and it has been recently revived due to its evolutionary consequences (revised in García-Arenal & Fraile, 2011). The fact that plant viruses miss of mechanisms that actively allow them to move across cell walls means that the colonization of their hosts must be symplastic. Consequently, plant viruses do not respond to a mass-action law, as it may be the case for bacteriophages infecting bacterial cultures growing in chemostats. The ! 19! intercellular connections, the organization of tissues, the architecture of plants, and the connectivity between distal parts by the vascular system generates a highly structured environment wherein viral populations must replicate and evolve. In terms of population genetics, this means that the viral population replicating within an infected plant cannot be considered as a single, panmictic, population but as an ensemble of subpopulations, each one occupying distinct tissues or organs; that is, a metapopulation. Evidences for this within-plant structuration are abundant and gathered using distinct experimental approaches, RNA and DNA viruses, and herbaceous and tree hosts (Dietrich & Maiss, 2003; González-Jara et al., 2009; Hall et al., 2001; Jridi et al., 2006). These spatial structures impose strongly restrictive conditions to the expansion of new beneficial mutations (those that eventually would increase the fitness of an emerging virus in the new host). Furthermore, spatial segregation reduces intracellular competition and, therefore, the efficiency of natural selection to optimize the average metapopulation fitness, independently of the magnitude of the beneficial effect conferred by a mutation, since the mutation would remain confined to a spatial region surrounded by less fit genotypes, as it has been recently proved for TEV (Zwart et al., 2011, 2012). An interesting question is whether the segregation into subpopulations is governed by differences in viral fitness or, by contrast, is a purely stochastic process. The population genetics parameter used to quantify the impact of genetic drift in the structure of populations is the effective population size (Ne). Answering the above questions, as well as to obtain good quantitative estimates of Ne during the systemic colonization of a host, has attracted the attention of several groups along recent years. The experimental approaches to this problem were all based in infecting plants with a mixture of two or more genotypes of a virus and analyze the segregation of these genotypes on the different tissues or organs. The estimates of Ne obtained so far vary between a few units (French & Stenger, 2003; Sacristán et al., 2003) to few hundreds [Elena (2011) reanalyzing data from Li & Roossinck (2004); Monsion et al., 2008]. ! 20! Summarizing, Ne varies widely among viruses and hosts. Whether these differences are relevant and a consequence of biological properties of each pathosystem, or simply experimental or analytical artifacts has to be solidly established. The relevant point here is that Ne is always several orders of magnitude smaller than the number of viral genomes in the census of the population (e.g., in the order of 1010 – 1012 per tobacco leaf for TMV; García-Arenal & Fraile, 2011), suggesting that genetic drift must be important in the evolution of viral populations. We would like to make a final consideration about the spatial expansion of genetic variants when the multiplicity of infection is high: under such circumstances, complementation between genetic variants can reduce the rate of fixation of beneficial mutations (Frank, 2001). Whenever several viral genotypes are found within the same cell, the effective ploidy of the system is high, diluting the contribution of each locus to the phenotype and relaxing the effect of selection over each of them. A weaker selection implies more genetic diversity and the maintenance of deleterious variants in the viral population during longer periods of time. Indeed, in two different virus systems complementation efficiency has been estimated, showing the maintenance of these mutants at high frequency through transcomplementation (Fraile et al., 2008; Moreno et al., 1997). In such situations, evolving mechanisms of superinfection inhibition (Folimonova, 2012) would be beneficial for the virus in the long run, since these mechanisms would minimize complementation and accelerate the evolution of linked loci. 3.4. Mixed Infections and Among-Virus Interactions We have just mentioned that coinfection and complementation among genetic variants carrying beneficial alleles and others carrying deleterious ones may slow down the rate of evolution. Nonetheless, during the early moments of Phase II, coinfection between an emerging virus and a different one already adapted to the new host may prove to be beneficial for the former. There are two relevant questions in this regard: (i) how frequent is that two viral species coinfect the same cells in the same plant? And (ii) do ! 21! two viruses coinfecting the same plant share resources or, by contrast, occupy different niches? Interspecific coinfections are a very common phenomenon and the plant virology literature contains a large number of references describing cases of coinfections. In an exhaustive analysis of the incidence of five viral species in 21 wild plant species, Malpica et al. (2006) found that the prevalence of certain viruses was not independent from the prevalence of other viruses; certain combinations appeared more frequently than expected by share chance. In an individual host, coinfection may have variable consequences, from the development of milder symptoms to their exacerbation (Hammond et al., 1999). Mixed infections also affect traits such as the host range (García-Cano et al., 2006; Guerini & Murphy, 1999; Hacker & Fowler, 2000), the rate of transmission (Wintermantel et al., 2008), cellular tropism (Moreno et al., 1997; Sánchez-Navarro et al., 2006), or viral accumulation (Martín & Elena, 2009). Most studies focused in diseases caused by the synergy of two ssDNA or two ssRNA viruses, particularly of a potyvirus and other ssRNA virus. In many cases, the viral load of the non-potyvirus is increased, whereas that of the potyvirus remains unaltered, being this observation explained by the activity of the potyvirus HC-Pro protein as suppressor of RNA silencing (Dunoyer & Voinnet, 2005). Nonetheless, these interactions not always result in a synergistic potentiation of symptoms (or in new symptoms), but the result depends from the particular combination of viral species, even with descriptions of a negative effect on the non-potyvirus accumulation (Kokkinos & Clark, 2006). In previous paragraphs we have provided evidences that two isolates of the same virus may exclude each other from a cell, creating spatially segregating distributions of genotypes with minimal overlap. At least in the case of potyviruses, the exclusion described by Dietrich & Maiss (2003) was limited to variants of Plum pox virus (PPV), whereas potyviruses from different species did not exclude each other and were found infecting the same cells (Dietrich & Maiss, 2003). Given that potyvirus ! 22! species still show significant sequence similarities, interespecific coinfections between members of the same genus open the possibility for recombination and/or reassortment and, hence, for the origin of new viral species. 4. PHASE III. LONG-TERM CHANGES IN VIRUS EPIDEMIOLOGY 4.1. Basic Reproductive Rate and Epidemics Dynamics Epidemics of emergent plant viral disease may be entirely sustained by spill-over from a reservoir. For example, Lettuce necrotic yellows virus (LNYV) emerged in lettuce crops in Australia in the 1950s from indigenous hosts in the Asteraceae. Emergence was due to the introduction of a new, highly competent host, Sonchus oleraceus, and a highly efficient vector, Hyperomyzus lactucae. Infection in lettuce results in a fast systemic necrosis, so that secondary infections are not relevant, and epidemics are due to transmission from the asymptomatic host S. oleraceus (Martin & Randles, 1981). Another well-documented case concerns Mal de Rio Cuarto virus, a reovirus causing the major maize viral disease in Argentina since the 1980s, which is propagatively transmitted by delphacid vectors. Epidemics in maize are strictly monocyclic, and depend on the migration to the young maize plants of viruliferous vectors from wild grasses or winter grain crops such as wheat (Rodriguez Pardina et al., 1998). However, as was pointed out in the introductory section of this review, disease emergence usually involves deep epidemiological changes allowing the pathogen to establish cycles of secondary infection in the new host, after primary infection due to transmission from that host or from reservoirs. Theory predicts that the epidemiological potential of a pathogen largely depends on its potential for transmission in the new host. Transmission potential may be assimilated to the disease’s basic reproduction value, R0, which represents the mean number of new infections per infected host in the susceptible host population. R0 ! 23! is a measure of the pathogen’s fecundity, and it is considered as the best correlate for its fitness. Experimental determination of R0 may be difficult, but R0 is related to a second epidemiological parameter easier to estimate, the apparent infection rate of disease progress curves (DPC), r, as r represents the number of secondary infections per infected host and per unit time. R0 may be estimated from r if the duration of the infectious period is known (Frank, 1996; Gibbs et al., 2010). An obvious condition for an epidemic to occur, is R0 > 1. At the beginning of emergence, when the number of infected hosts is small, this condition will not be fulfilled, but considerations of stochasticity allow developing expressions that predict the probability of emergence (Gandon et al., 2012). R0 is positively related to the transmission rate, β, and with the census size of the susceptible host population, and negatively to virulence and the rates of host mortality and recovery (Anderson & May, 1982). Hence, during this phase of emergence, virus evolution should maximize R0 by reducing virulence (see the LNYV case above) and/or increasing transmission rate. 4.2. Host Competence and Transmission Rates Most epidemiological models assume that the between-host component of a pathogen’s fitness is dependent on the within-host fitness component, i.e., that the between host transmission rate is positively correlated with the within-host multiplication rate. This relationship is also assumed in theoretical analyses of the epidemiology of vector-transmitted plant viruses (e.g., Jeger et al., 2006, 2011; Madden et al., 2000), which are the largest fraction of plant viruses. The transmission rate β can be decomposed in the product of two parameters, the probability per unit time that a transmission event occurs (βe) and the probability of transmission per transmission event (βp) (Day, 2001; Escriu et al., 2003). For aphid-transmitted viruses, either persistently or non-persistently, it has been repeatedly shown that βp is positively correlated with virus accumulation in the source leaf within a range of accumulation values: transmission requires a threshold level of virus accumulation, and βp saturates ! 24! at high virus accumulation (Escriu et al., 2000; Foxe & Rochow, 1975; JiménezMartínez & Bosque-Pérez 2004; Pirone & Megahed, 1966). The relationship between transmission rate and within-host multiplication is highly relevant, and means that host adaptation during Phase II of emergence will have a direct consequence in the epidemiological changes during Phase III. However, this relationship may not hold for all types of virus transmission, as has been shown for contact-transmitted Tobacco mosaic virus (Sacristán et al., 2011). Since R0 is positively related to the size of the susceptible host population, it will be affected by host heterogeneity in resistance/susceptibility, i.e., heterogeneity in sustaining virus multiplication. Heterogeneity in susceptibility will result, thus, in heterogeneity in host competence, i.e., in how efficient is a host as a source for transmission (Cronin et al., 2010). The epidemiological consequences of host heterogeneity have been extensively modeled (Day et al., 2006; Lloyd-Smith et al., 2005, Yates et al., 2006), with the general conclusion that it will slow down emergence, but we are not aware of experimental tests of model predictions with plant viruses. Model analyses based on experimentally determined parameters, however, show that strain-specific differences in susceptibility and competence of two hosts of CMV determine the relative weight of primary (between-hosts) and secondary (within-host) transmissions for CMV epidemics and, according to the composition of the host population, may slow-down the emergence of highly virulent CMV strains (Betancourt et al., 2013). It should be mentioned that host competence also depends on host resistance or susceptibility to the insect vector, an important topic out of the scope of this review (Westwood & Stevens, 2010). The probability of transmission per transmission event, βp, is mechanistically determined by specific interactions between viral proteins, such as the coat protein or the helper component, and poorly known vector factors, probably of a protein nature (Blanc & Drucker, 2011). 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