Horizontally transmitted symbionts and host colonization of ecological niches.

ABSTRACT: Facultative or "secondary" symbionts are common in eukaryotes, particularly insects. While not essential for host survival, they often provide significant fitness benefits. It has been hypothesized that secondary symbionts form a "horizontal gene pool" shuttling adaptive genes among host lineages in an analogous manner to plasmids and other mobile genetic elements in bacteria. However, we do not know whether the distributions of symbionts across host populations reflect random acquisitions followed by vertical inheritance or whether the associations have occurred repeatedly in a manner consistent with a dynamic horizontal gene pool. Here we explore these questions using the phylogenetic and ecological distributions of secondary symbionts carried by 1,104 pea aphids, Acyrthosiphon pisum. We

SUBMITTER: Henry LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3980636 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature