Molecular surveys have suggested the diversity is much greater than the current number of described species, and that many "species" described in multiple hosts are in fact different, but gene sequences from formally described species remain a rarity.
These ticks seek multiple hosts, are nocturnal and cryptic, and commonly attack humans and other animals resting under trees (10 ).
In other words, the move from direct life cycles with one host to complex life cycles with multiple hosts was a single evolutionary event.
As in the AMOVA groups, some samples were excluded because multiple hosts were grown in the same compartment or greenhouse (see above).
At least 19 species belonging to 14 different families in both monocot and dicot clades are natural hosts of T. versicolor, and multiple hosts are often parasitized simultaneously by T. versicolor in the fields [ 19].
Notably, RNA viruses with an inherent high mutational rate, bacteria capable of acquiring genetic material and pathogens infecting multiple hosts are more likely to turn into an emerging disease agent.
These problems, often seen in single host-pathogen systems, for example, white-tailed deer and bTB in Michigan (O'Brien et al. 2004) and white-tailed deer and CWD in Wisconsin (Joly et al. 2006), are further compounded when multiple hosts are present, as is the case for bTB in the Riding Mountain Region.
Thus, genotypes that are highly virulent on multiple hosts are unlikely to arise by recombination between races that specialize on distinct specific hosts, although occasionally, acquiring an effector from one race by introgression might offer an adaptive advantage assuming that the effector is not recognised.
A key distinction separating our work from nearly all theoretical studies of virulence evolution in multiple infected hosts is that we examine multispecies infections (as opposed to multiple strains differing only in a focal virulence trait [ 22]).
Experimental verification, including phenotypic profiling in multiple bacterial hosts, is therefore necessary to fully evaluate the resistance potential of our predictions.
