When does mutualism offer a competitive advantage? A game-theoretic analysis of host-host competition in mutualism.

ABSTRACT: Due to their non-motile nature, plants rely heavily on mutualistic interactions to obtain resources and carry out services. One key mutualism is the plant-microbial mutualism in which a plant trades away carbon to a microbial partner for nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous. Plants show much variation in the use of this partnership from the individual level to entire lineages depending upon ecological, evolutionary and environmental context. We sought to determine how this context dependency could result in the promotion, exclusion or coexistence of the microbial mutualism by asking if and when the partnership provided a competitive advantage to the plant. To that end, we created a 2 × 2 evolutionary game in which plants could either be a mutualist and pair with a microbe or be a non-mu

SUBMITTER: Halloway AH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9015964 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature