Viral plasticity facilitates host diversity in challenging environments.

ABSTRACT: The antagonistic coevolution of microbes and viruses influences fundamentally the diversity of microbial communities. Information on how environmental variables interact with emergent defense-counterdefense strategies and community composition is, however, still scarce. Following biological intuition, diversity should increase with improved growth conditions, which offset evolutionary costs; however, laboratory and regional data suggest that microbial diversity decreases in nutrient-rich conditions. Moreover, global oceanic data show that microbial and viral diversity decline for high latitudes, although the underlying mechanisms are unknown. This article addresses these gaps by introducing an eco-evolutionary model for bacteria-virus antagonistic coevolution. The theory presented here har

SUBMITTER: Bonachela JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11362530 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature