Caught in the act: Rapid, symbiont-driven evolution : Endosymbiont infection is a mechanism generating rapid evolution in some arthropods – but how widespread is the phenomenon?
✍ Scribed by Jennifer A. White
- Book ID
- 101704982
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2011
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 462 KB
- Volume
- 33
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0265-9247
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Abstract
Facultative bacterial endosymbionts can transfer horizontally among lineages of their arthropod hosts, providing the recipient with a suite of traits that can lead to rapid evolutionary response, as has been recently demonstrated. But how common is symbiont‐driven evolution? Evidence suggests that successful symbiont transfers are most likely within a species or among closely related species, although more distant transfers have occurred over evolutionary history. Symbiont‐driven evolution need not be a function of a recent horizontal transfer, however. Many endosymbionts infect only a small proportion of a host population, but could quickly increase in frequency under favorable selection regimes. Some host species appear to accumulate a diversity of facultative endosymbionts, and it is among these species that symbiont‐driven evolution should be most prevalent. It remains to be determined how frequently symbionts enable rapid evolutionary response by their hosts, but substantial ecological effects are a likely consequence whenever it does occur.