Manipulating multi-level selection in a fungal entomopathogen reveals social conflicts and a method for improving biocontrol traits.

ABSTRACT: Changes in parasite virulence are commonly expected to lead to trade-offs in other life history traits that can affect fitness. Understanding these trade-offs is particularly important if we want to manipulate the virulence of microbial biological control agents. Theoretically, selection across different spatial scales, i.e. between- and within-hosts, shapes these trade-offs. However, trade-offs are also dependent on parasite biology. Despite their applied importance the evolution of virulence in fungal parasites is poorly understood: virulence can be unstable in culture and commonly fails to increase in simple passage experiments. We hypothesized that manipulating selection intensity at different scales would reveal virulence trade-offs in a fungal pathogen of aphids, Akanthomyces muscari

SUBMITTER: Erdos Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10994555 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature