Dynamic virulence decomposition disentangles host and pathogen contributions over the course of infection.

Dynamic virulence decomposition in experimentally infected house finches (Haemorhous mexicanus) shows pathogen exploitation, PPP, and host resistance follow distinct trajectories across early innate and later adaptive immune phases.

• Why it matters: Conventional virulence decomposition cannot quantify how host and pathogen contributions change during infection, limiting mechanistic understanding of how virulence is generated over time.
• What they did: The authors built a dynamic framework combining conventional virulence decomposition with disease space analysis, applied to existing data from Haemorhous mexicanus infected with Mycoplasma gallisepticum across two infection phases.
• The result: Virulence components evolved differently by phase, corroborating known evolutionary patterns and revealing increased PPP in this system, while phase-specific analysis did not support host tolerance inferred from aggregated peak measurements.

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