Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
11
pubmed:dateCreated
2009-11-16
pubmed:abstractText
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.
pubmed:commentsCorrections
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pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:issn
1932-6203
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Electronic
pubmed:volume
4
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
e7802
pubmed:dateRevised
2010-9-28
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2009
pubmed:articleTitle
Interference competition and high temperatures reduce the virulence of fig wasps and stabilize a fig-wasp mutualism.
pubmed:affiliation
Ecology, Conservation, and Environment Center (ECEC), State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China.
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't