A symbiont's dispersal strategy: condition-dependent dispersal underlies predictable variation in direct transmission among hosts.

ABSTRACT: Direct horizontal transmission of pathogenic and mutualistic symbionts has profound consequences for host and symbiont fitness alike. While the importance of contact rates for transmission is widely recognized, the processes that underlie variation in transmission during contact are rarely considered. Here, we took a symbiont's perspective of transmission as a form of dispersal and adopted the concept of condition-dependent dispersal strategies from the study of free-living organisms to understand and predict variation in transmission in the cleaning symbiosis between crayfish and ectosymbiotic branchiobdellidan worms. Field study showed that symbiont reproductive success was correlated with host size and competition among worms for microhabitats. Laboratory experiments demonstrated high v

SUBMITTER: Skelton J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4685820 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature