Behavior out of control: experimental evolution of resistance to host manipulation

Many parasites alter their host's phenotype in a manner that enhances their own fitness beyond the benefits they would gain from normal exploitation. Such host manipulation is rarely consistent with the host's best interests resulting in suboptimal and often fatal behavior from the host's perspective. In this case, hosts should evolve resistance to host manipulation. The cestode Schistocephalus solidus manipulates the behavior of its first intermediate copepod host to reduce its predation susceptibility and avoid fatal premature predation before the parasite is ready for transmission to its subsequent host. Thereafter, S. solidus increases host activity to facilitate transmission. If successful, this host manipulation is necessarily fatal for the host. I selected the copepod Macrocyclops albidus, a first intermediate host of S. solidus, for resistance or susceptibility to host manipulation to investigate their evolvability. Selection on the host indeed increased host manipulation in susceptible and reduced host manipulation in resistant selection lines. Interestingly, this seemed to be at least partly due to changes in the baseline levels of the modified trait (activity) rather than actual changes in resistance or susceptibility to host manipulation. Hence, hosts seem restricted in how rapidly and efficiently they can evolve resistance to host manipulation

The response of stock prices to changes in weekly money and the discount rate

Money supply ; Stock - Prices ; Discount

Does dollar depreciation cause inflation?

Inflation (Finance) ; Dollar, American

The FOMC in 1985: reacting to declining M1 velocity

Federal Open Market Committee ; Money supply ; Velocity of money ; Monetary policy - United States

What remains of monetarism?

In October 1979 the Federal Reserve, in an attempt to curb double-digit inflation, announced that it would place more weight on monetary aggregates in policy deliberations. This policy shift helped reduce inflation but sent the economy into a recession. Three years later the Fed abandoned monetary targets and returned to targeting the federal funds rate. ; Monetary growth targets currently play no official role in the setting of U.S. monetary policy. Is such disregard justified by the data any more today than it was twenty years ago? This article provides a historical perspective on the development and apparent failure of monetarism as a policy guide. ; The author also explores whether the basic monetarist propositions still hold true for a sample of fifteen countries. The analysis suggests that it is premature to dismiss monetary aggregates as uninformative. The data from the economies studied indicate that, in general, nominal income growth and inflation are positively related to money growth. While these results do not support short-term manipulation of the monetary aggregates to deliver precise control over movements in income and prices, they also do not reject the notion that changes in money growth have important long-term effects on the economy. What the results suggest, therefore, is that failure to acknowledge this empirical fact could lead to undesirable policy consequences.Monetary policy ; Monetary theory

Weekly money supply forecasts: effects of the October 1979 change in monetary control procedures

Money supply ; Monetary policy

Money, debt and economic activity

Economic conditions - United States ; Economic indicators

The new monetary aggregates

Monetary policy ; Money supply

The prime rate and the cost of funds: is the prime too high?

Prime rate ; Interest rates

The FOMC in 1983-84: setting policy in an uncertain world

Federal Open Market Committee