Do plant pathogens prefer seedlings? Variation in age specific infectivity across pathogen genotypes

Across plant and animal species, juveniles are generally more susceptible to infectious pathogens than adults. A growing body of research has explored how age-specific resistance evolves and why juvenile susceptibility is maintained in host populations. From the less well-studied pathogen’s perspective, juvenile susceptibility means that most pathogens infect juvenile hosts more readily than adult hosts. In the present study, we investigated whether this pattern of age-specific infectivity varied across pathogen genotypes within a fungal pathogen species (Microbotryum lychnidis-dioicae) infecting a plant host (Silene latifolia). We inoculated four host genotypes with each of five pathogen genotypes at two different host ages (seedling and adult) and scored the proportion infected for each host genotype*pathogen genotype combination. The data set contains the total number of plants scored and the number that were infected for each GxG combination.  We also recorded the sex of each i..., , # Data from: Do plant pathogens prefer seedlings? Variation in age specific infectivity across pathogen genotypes

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.pvmcvdnz7](10.5061/dryad.pvmcvdnz7)

## Description of the data and file structure

Plants from 4 full sib families of Silene latifolia were grown to 2 ages ('juvenile' and 'adult') and inoculated with five different strains of the anther-smut fungus. 

The data set consists of 2989 individual plant.s. For each plants, we scored the infection status (diseased vs healthy), the reproductive status at the time of inoculation (vegetative vs reproductive) and the sex (male vs female). 

### Files and variables

#### File: Stats_Analysis-updated.R

**Description:** 

#### File: Inoc_data.csv

**Description:** Data for 2989 individual Silene latifolia plants in the inoculation experiment

##### Variables

* date: Date that the flower was scored for infection
* replicate: experimental replicate for transplanting
* cohort: host age. Scored as either 'juve..., ,