Unifying Coexistence Theory for Ecological Communities and Pathogen Strain Competition

Abstract Predicting the outcome of species or pathogen strain competition is a fundamental aim in both community ecology and infectious disease dynamics. Recent work revealed major challenges in predicting strain co-circulation from ecological coexistence theory due to overcompensatory competition among pathogens for susceptible resources, which can prevent the re-invasion of other competing strains. This resource overcompensation is ubiquitous across host-pathogen systems, but not apparent in simple Lotka-Volterra competition system, highlighting fundamental differences between pathogen strain and species competition. To address this gap, we begin by deriving classical models of pathogen strain and species competition from a resource-consumer model. This generalization illustrates that the relative time scale between resource and consumer dynamics limits the degree of resource overcompensation and therefore dictates the outcome of stochastic competition. Moreover, by introducing a mathematical framework for quantifying pairwise and higher-order terms from general competition systems, we show that a simple, ecological competition model can accurately predict the equilibrium dynamics of strain competition. A case study of rotavirus strain competition reveals that the ability to predict the outcome of strain competition from ecological theory depends on the underlying cross immunity structure. This work synthesizes coexistence theory across two fields by providing a unifying framework for predicting the outcome of complex ecological competition.