Figure 6.

Coinfections. Smoothed relative fitness of synchronous:asynchronous strain, with increasing levels of merozoite competition and gametocyte investment. As in fig. 5, values greater than 1 (white areas) indicate superior transmission of the synchronous strain. Immunity is absent (A, a = 0), immunity acts on the total number of red blood cells infected by asexual parasites of both strains (B, a = 150, b = 100) or on merozoites of both strains (C, a = 7200, b = 100). Again, synchronous strains perform better when immunity targets short-lived parasite stage.