Hesse, E., Best, A., Boots, M. et al. (2 more authors) (2015) Spatial heterogeneity lowers rather than increases host-parasite specialization. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 28 (9). pp. 1682-1690. ISSN 1010-061X
Abstract
Abiotic environmental heterogeneity can promote the evolution of diverse resource specialists, which in turn may increase the degree of host–parasite specialization. We coevolved Pseudomonas fluorescens and lytic phage ϕ2 in spatially structured populations, each consisting of two interconnected subpopulations evolving in the same or different nutrient media (homogeneous and heterogeneous environments, respectively). Counter to the normal expectation, host–parasite specialization was significantly lower in heterogeneous compared with homogeneous environments. This result could not be explained by dispersal homogenizing populations, as this would have resulted in the heterogeneous treatments having levels of specialization equal to or greater than that of the homogeneous environments. We argue that selection for costly generalists is greatest when the coevolving species are exposed to diverse environmental conditions and that this can provide an explanation for our results. A simple coevolutionary model of this process suggests that this can be a general mechanism by which environmental heterogeneity can reduce rather than increase host–parasite specialization.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 The Authors. This is an Open Access Article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | antagonistic coevolution; bacteria; migration; phages; selection mosaics; specificity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Mathematics and Statistics (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number LEVERHULME TRUST (THE) ECF-2013-117 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 07 Dec 2016 09:52 |
Last Modified: | 07 Dec 2016 09:55 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12689 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/jeb.12689 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:108715 |
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