Microbial warfare and the evolution of symbiosis.

ABSTRACT: Cooperative symbionts enable their hosts to exploit a diversity of environments. A low genetic diversity (high relatedness) between the symbionts within a host is thought to favour cooperation by reducing conflict within the host. However, hosts will not be favoured to transmit their symbionts (or commensals) in costly ways that increase relatedness, unless this also provides an immediate fitness benefit to the host. We suggest that conditionally expressed costly competitive traits, such as antimicrobial warfare with bacteriocins, could provide a relatively universal reason for why hosts would gain an immediate benefit from increasing the relatedness between symbionts. We theoretically test this hypothesis with a simple illustrative model that examines whether hosts should manipulate relat

SUBMITTER: Patel M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9768647 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature