edoc

Genetic, ecological and geographic covariables explaining host range and specificity of a microsporidian parasite

Lange, Benjamin and Kaufmann, Andrea Patricia and Ebert, Dieter. (2015) Genetic, ecological and geographic covariables explaining host range and specificity of a microsporidian parasite. The journal of animal ecology, 84 (6). pp. 1711-1719.

Full text not available from this repository.

Official URL: http://edoc.unibas.ch/40757/

Downloads: Statistics Overview

Abstract

Parasites often have a smaller geographic distribution than their hosts. Common garden infection trials can untangle the role that historical contingencies, ecological conditions and the genetic constitution of local host populations play in limiting parasite geographic range; however, infection trials usually overestimate the range of hosts in which a parasite could naturally persist. This study overcomes that problem by using multigeneration, long-term persistence experiments. We study the microsporidian parasite Hamiltosporidium tvaerminnensis in monoclonal populations of Daphnia magna from 43 widely spread sites. The parasite persisted well in hosts collected from its natural geographic range, but demonstrated long-term persistence in only a few host genotypes outside this range. Genetic distance between hosts from the parasite's origin site and newly tested host populations correlated negatively with parasite persistence. Furthermore, the parasite persisted only in host populations from habitats with a high likelihood of drying up in summer, although we excluded environmental variation in our experiments. Together, our results suggest that host genetic factors play the dominant role in explaining the limited geographic range of parasites and that these genetic differences covary with geographic distance and the habitat type the host is adapted to.
Faculties and Departments:05 Faculty of Science > Departement Umweltwissenschaften > Integrative Biologie > Evolutionary Biology (Ebert)
UniBasel Contributors:Ebert, Dieter
Item Type:Article, refereed
Article Subtype:Research Article
Publisher:Blackwell Science
ISSN:0021-8790
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Journal article
Identification Number:
Last Modified:09 Aug 2016 08:23
Deposited On:09 Aug 2016 08:23

Repository Staff Only: item control page