Contingency rules for pathogen competition and antagonism in a genetically based, plant defense hierarchy.

ABSTRACT: Plant defense against pathogens includes a range of mechanisms, including, but not limited to, genetic resistance, pathogen-antagonizing endophytes, and pathogen competitors. The relative importance of each mechanism can be expressed in a hierarchical view of defense. Several recent studies have shown that pathogen antagonism is inconsistently expressed within the plant defense hierarchy. Our hypothesis is that the hierarchy is governed by contingency rules that determine when and where antagonists reduce plant disease severity.Here, we investigated whether pathogen competition influences pathogen antagonism using Populus as a model system. In three independent field experiments, we asked whether competition for leaf mesophyll cells between a Melampsora rust pathogen and a mi

SUBMITTER: Busby PE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6662256 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature