Authors: Skylar R Hopkins Lindsey J Boyle Lisa K Belden Jeremy M Wojdak
Publish Date: 2015/05/12
Volume: 179, Issue: 2, Pages: 307-318
Abstract
Symbiont dispersal is necessary for the maintenance of defense mutualisms in space and time and the distribution of symbionts among hosts should be intricately tied to symbiont dispersal behaviors However we know surprisingly little about how most defensive symbionts find and choose advantageous hosts or what cues trigger symbionts to disperse from their current hosts In a series of six experiments we explored the dispersal ecology of an oligochaete worm Chaetogaster limnaei that protects snail hosts from infection by larval trematode parasites Specifically we determined the factors that affected net symbiont dispersal from a current “donor” host to a new “receiver” host Symbionts rarely dispersed unless hosts directly came in contact with one another However symbionts overcame their reluctance to disperse across the open environment if the donor host died When hosts came in direct contact net symbiont dispersal varied with both host size and trematode infection status whereas symbiont density did not influence the probability of symbiont dispersal Together these experiments show that symbiont dispersal is not a constant random process as is often assumed in symbiont dispersal models but rather the probability of dispersal varies with ecological conditions and among individual hosts The observed heterogeneity in dispersal rates among hosts may help to explain symbiont aggregation among snail hosts in natureSymbiont dispersal among hosts is usually assumed to occur randomly with an equal probability of dispersal among all hosts Here we show that symbiont dispersal rates vary with ecological conditions and among individual hosts This nonrandom symbiont dispersal can help explain why symbionts are aggregated among hosts which in turn has important consequences for symbiont–host interactionsMany thanks to J Walters for helpful comments and discussions of the manuscript This work was supported by National Science Foundation grants DEB0918656 J M W and DEB0918960 L K B L J B was supported by a Research Experience for Undergraduates supplement to NSF DEB0918656
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