MINIREVIEW Acute and Persistent Viral Life Strategies and Their Relationship to Emerging Diseases

stinct life strategies.However, since various acute viruses can be both avirgin soil epidemic (r-selected) and a childhood infectionat equilibrium in the population (K-selected), theselife strategies cannot be applied to individual viral species(Villarreal, 1999). Yet viruses do appear to havedistinct patterns of acute and persistent host infection.Viral persistence has been considered with respect tosources of epidemic disease (Mahy, 1985; Domingo etal., 1998; Holland, 1996; Oldstone, ...