Insect hosts are nutritional landscapes navigated by fungal pathogens.

ABSTRACT: Nutrition can mediate host-pathogen interactions indirectly when specific deficiencies (e.g., iron or glutamine) constrain host immune performance. Nutrition can also directly govern these interactions as invading pathogens colonize finite landscapes of nutritionally variable host tissues that must be optimally foraged during pathogen development. We first used a conceptual framework of nutritional niches to show that insect-pathogenic Metarhizium fungi navigate host landscapes where different tissues vary widely in (protein [P] and carbohydrates [C]). We next tested whether host-specific Metarhizium species have narrower fundamental nutritional niches (FNNs) than host-generalists by measuring pathogen performance across an in vitro nutritional landscape simulating a within-host foraging e

SUBMITTER: De Fine Licht HH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11803695 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature