Table 1. Description of model parameters and their fixed values, or prior distributions used in Bayesian statistical inference.

Where parameters were estimated (indicated by ${}^{*}$ on the description), we assigned generic priors (for immune parameters, ${\psi }_{N_1}$ and ${\psi }_{N_2}$, and hyperpriors ${\sigma }_s$ and ${\sigma }_u$) and weakly informative priors centred around specific estimates from previous studies for the rest.

Symbol	Description	Fixed value or prior	Source
Host responses
ρ	Proportion of deviation from $R_c$ restored per day *	$0.25\times \exp (𝒩(0,1))$	Miller et al., 2010
${\psi }_{N_1}$	Activation strength of indiscriminate RBC clearance *	$\exp (𝒩(0,1))$
${\psi }_{N_2}$	Activation strength of targeted iRBC clearance *	$\exp (𝒩(0,1))$
Within-host infection dynamics
$R_c$	RBC density at homeostatic equilibrium	${\mathrm{RBC}}_{(t=0)}$	data
$I_{\text{max}}$	Maximum iRBC density observed	$2.65\times {10}^6$ per microliter	data
${\mu }_R$	Daily background RBC mortality rate	0.025	Miller et al., 2010
${\mu }_R^{\prime }$	Daily background RBC mortality rate (during infection) *	$0.025\times \exp (𝒩(0,1))$	Miller et al., 2010
${\mu }_R^{\prime \prime }$	Density-independent RBC replenishment rate (during infection) *	$0.025\times \exp (𝒩(0,1))$	Miller et al., 2010
β	Parasite burst size *	$7\times \exp (𝒩(0,1))$	Miller et al., 2010
$p$	Merozoite invasion rate	$1.5\times {10}^{-5}$ per day	Mideo et al., 2011
${\mu }_M$	Merozoite mortality rate	48 per day	McAlister, 1977
Hyperpriors
${\sigma }_s$	Standard deviations for strain-level variation	$\exp (𝒩(0,1))$
${\sigma }_u$	Standard deviations for individual-level variation	$\exp (𝒩(0,1))$
Measurement errors
${\sigma }_{\mathrm{RBC}}$	Standard deviation for total RBC density *	$5\times {10}^5\times \exp (𝒩(0,1))$	Miller et al., 2010
${\sigma }_{\mathrm{iRBC}}$	Standard deviation for log10 iRBC count *	$0.2\times \exp (𝒩(0,1))$	Mideo et al., 2008b