Lifestyle alternatives for rhizobia: mutualism, parasitism, and forgoing symbiosis.

Lotus hosts delimit the mutualism-parasitism continuum of Bradyrhizobium.

Symbioses are modelled as evolutionarily and ecologically variable with fitness outcomes for hosts shifting on a continuum from mutualism to parasitism. In a classic example, rhizobia fix atmospheric nitrogen for legume hosts in exchange for photosynthetic carbon. Rhizobial infection often enhances legume growth, but hosts also incur interaction costs because of root tissues and or metabolites ...

Fungal symbiosis from mutualism to parasitism: who controls the outcome, host or invader?

Mutualism (biology)

Mutualism is the way two organisms of different species exist in a relationship in which each individual benefits from the activity of the other. Similar interactions within a species are known as co-operation. Mutualism can be contrasted with interspecific competition, in which each species experiences reduced fitness, and exploitation, or parasitism, in which one species benefits at the expen...

Symbiosis of Plants , 9 Animals , and Microbes

CIntroduction ........................... ................................................. .............. ......... .. ... .. .......................... 185 Life on Eruth ... ........ ... ... ............... ............ .. .. .. ................................................................................ 186 Parasitism and Pathogenicity .... ..... .......... .................................

Ecological genomics of mutualism decline in nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

Anthropogenic changes can influence mutualism evolution; however, the genomic regions underpinning mutualism that are most affected by environmental change are generally unknown, even in well-studied model mutualisms like the interaction between legumes and their nitrogen (N)-fixing rhizobia. Such genomic information can shed light on the agents and targets of selection maintaining cooperation ...