Siderophore cheating and cheating resistance shape competition for iron in soil and freshwater Pseudomonas communities.

ABSTRACT: All social organisms experience dilemmas between cooperators performing group-beneficial actions and cheats selfishly exploiting these actions. Although bacteria have become model organisms to study social dilemmas in laboratory systems, we know little about their relevance in natural communities. Here, we show that social interactions mediated by a single shareable compound necessary for growth (the iron-scavenging pyoverdine) have important consequences for competitive dynamics in soil and pond communities of Pseudomonas bacteria. We find that pyoverdine non- and low-producers co-occur in many natural communities. While non-producers have genes coding for multiple pyoverdine receptors and are able to exploit compatible heterologous pyoverdines from other community members, producers diff

SUBMITTER: Butaite E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5583256 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature