Interference Competition and High Temperatures Reduce the Virulence of Fig Wasps and Stabilize a Fig-Wasp Mutualism

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	Interference Competition and High Temperatures Reduce the Virulence of Fig Wasps and Stabilize a Fig-Wasp Mutualism
	Wang RW 1; Ridley J 2; Sun BF 1,3; Zheng Q 1,4; Dunn DW 2,5; Cook J 5; Shi L 6; Zhang YP 1; Yu DW[*]1,2
刊名	PLOS ONE
	2009
卷号	4 期号:11 页码:e7802
ISSN号	1932-6203
通讯作者	dougwyu@gmail.com
合作状况	其它
英文摘要	Fig trees are pollinated by fig wasps, which also oviposit in female flowers. The wasp larvae gall and eat developing seeds. Although fig trees benefit from allowing wasps to oviposit, because the wasp offspring disperse pollen, figs must prevent wasps from ovipositing in all flowers, or seed production would cease, and the mutualism would go extinct. In Ficus racemosa, we find that syconia ('figs') that have few foundresses (ovipositing wasps) are underexploited in the summer (few seeds, few galls, many empty ovules) and are overexploited in the winter (few seeds, many galls, few empty ovules). Conversely, syconia with many foundresses produce intermediate numbers of galls and seeds, regardless of season. We use experiments to explain these patterns, and thus, to explain how this mutualism is maintained. In the hot summer, wasps suffer short lifespans and therefore fail to oviposit in many flowers. In contrast, cooler temperatures in the winter permit longer wasp lifespans, which in turn allows most flowers to be exploited by the wasps. However, even in winter, only in syconia that happen to have few foundresses are most flowers turned into galls. In syconia with higher numbers of foundresses, interference competition reduces foundress lifespans, which reduces the proportion of flowers that are galled. We further show that syconia encourage the entry of multiple foundresses by delaying ostiole closure. Taken together, these factors allow fig trees to reduce galling in the wasp-benign winter and boost galling (and pollination) in the wasp-stressing summer. Interference competition has been shown to reduce virulence in pathogenic bacteria. Our results show that interference also maintains cooperation in a classic, cooperative symbiosis, thus linking theories of virulence and mutualism. More generally, our results reveal how frequency-dependent population regulation can occur in the fig-wasp mutualism, and how a host species can 'set the rules of the game' to ensure mutualistic behavior in its symbionts.
收录类别	SCI
资助信息	RWW, BFS, QZ were supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2007CB411600), the Yunnan Natural Science Foundation (2009CD104), the West Light Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30670272, 30770500), awarded to YPZ and RWW. LS was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10761010) and the National Social Science Foundation of China (08XTJ001). JR and DD were supported by a NERC UK research grant (NE/C511264/2) awarded to JMC and DY. Support was also received from the Yunnan government (20080A001) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (0902281081), awarded to DWY. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
语种	英语
公开日期	2010-08-24
内容类型	期刊论文
源URL	[http://159.226.149.42:8088/handle/152453/2761]
专题	昆明动物研究所_动物生态学研究中心昆明动物研究所_遗传资源与进化国家重点实验室昆明动物研究所_分子进化基因组学昆明动物研究所_实验与理论生态学
作者单位	1.Ecology, Conservation, and Environment Center (ECEC), State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, Chin 2.Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation (CEEC) and School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom 3.Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 4.School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China 5.School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, Berks, United Kingdom 6.Statistics and Mathematics College, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, Kunming, Yunnan, China
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Wang RW,Ridley J,Sun BF,et al. Interference Competition and High Temperatures Reduce the Virulence of Fig Wasps and Stabilize a Fig-Wasp Mutualism[J]. PLOS ONE,2009,4(11):e7802.
APA	Wang RW.,Ridley J.,Sun BF.,Zheng Q.,Dunn DW.,...&Yu DW[*].(2009).Interference Competition and High Temperatures Reduce the Virulence of Fig Wasps and Stabilize a Fig-Wasp Mutualism.PLOS ONE,4(11),e7802.
MLA	Wang RW,et al."Interference Competition and High Temperatures Reduce the Virulence of Fig Wasps and Stabilize a Fig-Wasp Mutualism".PLOS ONE 4.11(2009):e7802.