Our results show that scent is an important flower trait that defines plant-pollinator interactions at the level of individual plants. The genetic basis underlying such a major phenotypic difference appears to be relatively simple and may enable rapid loss or gain of scent through hybridization.
Human hantavirus disease cases, caused by Puumala virus (PUUV), are mainly recorded in western and southern areas of Germany. This bank vole reservoir survey confirmed PUUV presence in these regions but its absence in northern and eastern regions. PUUV occurrence is associated with the presence of the Western bank vole phylogroup.
The diversity of viruses probably exceeds biodiversity of eukaryotes, but little is known about the origin and emergence of novel virus species. Experimentation and disease outbreak investigations have allowed the characterization of rapid molecular virus adaptation. However, the processes leading to the establishment of functionally distinct virus taxa in nature remain obscure. Here, we demonstrate that incipient speciation in a natural host species has generated distinct ecological niches leading to adaptive isolation in an RNA virus. We found a very strong association between the distributions of two major phylogenetic clades in Tula orthohantavirus (TULV) and the rodent host lineages in a natural hybrid zone of the European common vole ( Microtus arvalis ). The spatial transition between the virus clades in replicated geographic clines is at least eight times narrower than between the hybridizing host lineages. This suggests a strong barrier for effective virus transmission despite frequent dispersal and gene flow among local host populations, and translates to a complete turnover of the adaptive background of TULV within a few hundred meters in the open, unobstructed landscape. Genetic differences between TULV clades are homogenously distributed in the genomes and mostly synonymous (93.1%), except for a cluster of nonsynonymous changes in the 5′ region of the viral envelope glycoprotein gene, potentially involved in host-driven isolation. Evolutionary relationships between TULV clades indicate an emergence of these viruses through rapid differential adaptation to the previously diverged host lineages that resulted in levels of ecological isolation exceeding the progress of speciation in their vertebrate hosts.
Tula virus (TULV) is a vole-associated hantavirus with low or no pathogenicity to humans. In the present study, 686 common voles (Microtus arvalis), 249 field voles (Microtus agrestis) and 30 water voles (Arvicola spec.) were collected at 79 sites in Germany, Luxembourg and France and screened by RT-PCR and TULV-IgG ELISA. TULV-specific RNA and/or antibodies were detected at 43 of the sites, demonstrating a geographically widespread distribution of the virus in the studied area. The TULV prevalence in common voles (16.7 %) was higher than that in field voles (9.2 %) and water voles (10.0 %). Time series data at ten trapping sites showed evidence of a lasting presence of TULV RNA within common vole populations for up to 34 months, although usually at low prevalence. Phylogenetic analysis demonstrated a strong genetic structuring of TULV sequences according to geography and independent of the rodent species, confirming the common vole as the preferential host, with spillover infections to co-occurring field and water voles. TULV phylogenetic clades showed a general association with evolutionary lineages in the common vole as assessed by mitochondrial DNA sequences on a large geographical scale, but with local-scale discrepancies in the contact areas.
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