Elie B. auteur aut IRD Selinger Christian auteur aut IRD Alizon S. auteur aut IRD text journalArticle eng text/pdf born digital access There is known heterogeneity between individuals in infectious disease transmission patterns. The source of this heterogeneity is thought to affect epidemiological dynamics but studies tend not to control for the overall heterogeneity in the number of secondary cases caused by an infection. To explore the role of individual variation in infection duration and transmission rate in parasite emergence and spread, while controlling for this potential bias, we simulate stochastic outbreaks with and without parasite evolution. As expected, heterogeneity in the number of secondary cases decreases the probability of outbreak emergence. Furthermore, for epidemics that do emerge, assuming more realistic infection duration distributions leads to faster outbreaks and higher epidemic peaks. When parasites require adaptive mutations to cause large epidemics, the impact of heterogeneity depends on the underlying evolutionary model. If emergence relies on within-host evolution, decreasing the infection duration variance decreases the probability of emergence. These results underline the importance of accounting for realistic distributions of transmission rates to anticipate the effect of individual heterogeneity on epidemiological dynamics. specialized epidemiology modelling infection duration superspreading evolutionary rescue emerging infectious diseases 050 020 289 1974 20220232 [8 ] 2022 0962-8452 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010085094 10.1098/rspb.2022.0232 0962-8452 [F B010085094] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010085094 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/intranet/publi/2022-06/010085094.pdf Accès réservé (Intranet de l'IRD) IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2022-06-03 2025-02-24 fdi:010085094 fre