Consequences of parasite adaptation to drug‐treated infections. (a) The cumulative transmission potential in untreated infections where parasites employ different conversion rate strategies. Reproductive restraint in untreated infections produces only small transmission costs (purple and blue line) compared to strategies for untreated infections (black line), whereas terminating an infection early has bigger fitness consequences (red line). (b) The dynamics of uninfected red blood cells in those infections. Simulations assume optimal strategies for untreated infections (black), infections treated with a low dose (purple), medium dose (blue) and high dose (red). The reproductive restraint predicted for drug‐adapted strategies leads to earlier declines in RBCs and lower minimum values (i.e., greater anaemia) when infections are not drug‐treated