Ecology and evolution of facilitation among symbionts

Zélé, Flore; Magalhães, Sara; Kéfi, Sonia; Duncan, Alison B.

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06779-w

Cited by 70 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 101 publications

(178 reference statements)

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“…This change of the surface is especially visible for parameter α . This may be explained because soil degradation rate ( ε ) makes the vegetation to decrease globally, but due to the local interactions of facilitation [48], plants remain in the ecosystem for larger rates of soil degradation.…”

Section: Models and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this context, some universal types of interactions that occur among species in arid habitats inevitably lead to breakpoints associated to the existence of multiple alternative states, identified in field data [4]. A well known class of these interactions takes place among vascular plants and is known as facilitation [5, 7, 48], i. e. non-trophic interactions between individuals mediated through changes in the abiotic environment or through other organisms favouring individual growth and reproduction [8, 9, 36].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Synthetic soil crusts against green-desert transitions: a spatial model

Vidiella

Sardanyés

Solé

2019

Preprint

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Semiarid ecosystems are threatened by global warming due to longer dehydration times and increasing soil degradation. Mounting evidences indicate that, given the current trends, drylands are likely to expand and possibly experience catastrophic shifts from vegetated to desert states. Here we explore a recent suggestion based on the concept of ecosystem terraformation, where a synthetic organism is used to counterbalance some of the nonlinear effects causing the presence of such tipping points. Using an explicit spatial model incorporating facilitation and considering a simplification of states found in semiarid ecosystems i.e., vegetation, fertile and desert soil, we investigate how engineered microorganisms can shape the fate of these ecosystems. Specifically, two different, but complementary, terraformation strategies are proposed: Cooperation-based: C-terraformation; and Dispersion-based: D-terraformation. The first strategy involves the use of soil synthetic microorganisms to introduce cooperative loops (facilitation) with the vegetation. The second one involves the introduction of engineered microorganisms improving their dispersal capacity, thus facilitating the transition from desert to fertile soil. We show that small modifications enhancing cooperative loops can effectively change the location of the critical transition found at increasing soil degradation rates, also identifying a stronger protection against soil degradation by using the D-terraformation strategy. The same results are found in a mean field model providing insights into the transitions and dynamics tied to these terraformation strategies. The potential consequences and extensions of these models are discussed. I. INTRODUCTION1 Global warming is changing the dynamics and re-2 silience of ecosystems, damaging many of them and creat-3 ing the conditions for widespread diversity loss [2, 34, 35]. 4Because of the presence of nonlinear effects, many ecosys-5 tems display so called tipping points associated to com-6 munity collapse. Among these systems, drylands (which 7 comprise arid, semi-arid and dry-subhumid ecosystems) 8 are a specially fragile subset of major importance: they 9 include more than 40% of terrestrial ecosystems and host 10 a similar percentage of the current human population 11 [31]. Increasing aridity is pushing these ecosystems to-12 wards serious declines in microbial diversity, land degra-13 dation, loss of multifunctionality as a desert state is ap-14 proached [23, 31]. Dedicated efforts have been address-15 ing several avenues to both understanding how transi-16 tions can be anticipated by means of warning signals 17 [16, 18, 39, 45] and even prevented [31,40, 46]. 18 Drylands are characterised by the presence of organ-19 isms that have adapted to low moisture availability, dam-20 aging UV radiation and high temperatures [29]. A rich 21 community structure and the maintenance of physical 22 soil coherence are essential to prevent drylands from 23 degradation. In this context, some universal types of 24 interactions th...

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Section: Models and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthetic soil crusts against green-desert transitions: a spatial model

Vidiella

Sardanyés

Solé

2019

Preprint

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“…This model extends the logistic growth models used to describe the growth of the homogeneous spheroids by introducing cellcell interaction terms that describe interactions found in evolutionary biology: mutualism (mutually beneficial or cooperation), antagonism (one population benefits while the other is negatively affected) and/or competition (mutually detrimental). 13 As a first step, the logistic growth model was fitted to growth curves of homogeneous spheroids to estimate three parameters for each tumour cell population: the initial growth rate r, the carrying capacity K (or maximum spheroid volume at steady state), and the initial volume V0 (Fig 2a). The parameter values r and K were higher for the resistant population than for the control population in PC3 spheroids.…”

Section: Mathematical Modelling Predicts That Enhanced Growth Kineticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radiation resistant cancer cells enhance the survival and resistance of sensitive cells in prostate spheroids

Kannan

Paczkowski

Miar

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Intratumoural heterogeneity contributes to local tumour recurrence and variable responses to radiotherapy in prostate cancer. Despite the multiclonal nature of the disease, tumour control probability for conventional treatment plans is modelled on the assumption that tumour cells in the target region respond identically and independently. Here, using tumour cell subpopulations with different radiation sensitivities from prostate tumour cell lines, we show that radiation resistant cells enhance the survival and radiation resistance of radio-sensitive cells in spheroids but not in monolayer culture. Mathematical modelling indicates that these phenotypic changes result from both competitive and antagonistic cellular interactions in spheroids. Interactions mediated by oxygen constraints define the spatial localisation of the cell populations in spheroids and in xenografts, while those mediated by paracrine signals further modify the microenvironment. Our results show new mechanisms of radiotherapy resistance mediated by cellular interactions and by the microenvironment.

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“…Indeed, this method consists in deriving populations from a common ancestral and exposing them to specific controlled environments during several generations, which enables (a) knowledge of the ancestral state of populations, (b) the possibility to define and control the environments that populations are exposed to and (c) replication at the population level (Magalhães and Matos 2012). The explanatory power of experimental evolution can be used to unravel how populations adapt to environmental changes, the presence of antagonists or different population structures (Macke et al 2011, Kawecki et al 2012, Rodrigues et al 2016, Zélé et al 2018a. Moreover, this method can also be used to measure convergent evolution of different populations to a common environment (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating outbred and inbred populations of haplodiploid mites to measure adaptive responses in the lab

Godinho

Cruz

Masseliere

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Laboratory studies are often criticized for not being representative of processes occurring in natural populations. This can be partially mitigated by using lab populations that capture large amounts of variation. Additionally, many studies addressing adaptation of organisms to their environment are done with laboratory populations, using quantitative genetics or experimental evolution methodologies. Such studies rely on populations that are either highly outbred or inbred. However, the methodology underlying the generation of such biological resources are usually not explicitly documented.Given their small size, short generation time, amenability to laboratory experimentation and knowledge of their ecological interactions, haplodiploid spider mites are becoming a widely used model organism. Here, we describe the creation of outbred populations of two species of spider mites, Tetranychus urticae and T. evansi, obtained by performing controlled crosses between individuals from field-collected populations. Subsequently, from the outbred population of T. evansi, we derived inbred lines, by performing several generations of sibmating. These can be used to measure broad-sense heritability as well as correlations among traits. Finally, we outline an experimental evolution protocol that can be widely used in other systems. Sharing these biological resources with other laboratories and combining them with the available powerful genetic tools for T. urticae (and other species) will allow consistent and comparable studies that greatly contribute to our understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes. DPG and SM designed the study with help from LRR and FZ. DPG and LRR collected the spider mite populations. The creation of the outbred and inbred populations was performed by DPG, MAC, MCM, JTP and CE. FZ and IF developed the formula to calculate the coefficient of inbreeding and the effective number of generations of selection. The manuscript was written by DPG and SM with considerable contributions from all authors. References Agashe, D. (2009). The stabilizing effect of intraspecific genetic variation on population dynamics in novel and ancestral habitats.

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Ecology and evolution of facilitation among symbionts

Cited by 70 publications

References 101 publications

Synthetic soil crusts against green-desert transitions: a spatial model

Synthetic soil crusts against green-desert transitions: a spatial model

Radiation resistant cancer cells enhance the survival and resistance of sensitive cells in prostate spheroids

Creating outbred and inbred populations of haplodiploid mites to measure adaptive responses in the lab

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