Host hybridization as a potential mechanism of lateral symbiont transfer in deep-sea vesicomyid clams.

ABSTRACT: Deep-sea vesicomyid clams live in mutualistic symbiosis with chemosynthetic bacteria that are inherited through the maternal germ line. On evolutionary timescales, strictly vertical transmission should lead to cospeciation of host mitochondrial and symbiont lineages; nonetheless, examples of incongruent phylogenies have been reported, suggesting that symbionts are occasionally horizontally transmitted between host species. The current paradigm for vesicomyid clams holds that direct transfers cause host shifts or mixtures of symbionts. An alternative hypothesis suggests that hybridization between host species might explain symbiont transfers. Two clam species, Archivesica gigas and Phreagena soyoae, frequently co-occur at deep-sea hydrocarbon seeps in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Although the

SUBMITTER: Breusing C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7004080 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature