Variation in the environment is common within and between natural populations and may influence selection on plant resistance by altering the level of damage or the fitness consequences of damage from plant enemies. While much is known about how environmental variation influences the amount of damage a plant experiences, few studies have attempted to determine how variation in the environment m...

Phase variation of genes in bacteria enables phenotypic alteration to modulate interactions within a host as conditions change. To promote commensalism in animals and disease in humans, Campylobacter jejuni produces a flagellar organelle for motility. In addition to tight transcriptional regulation of flagellar genes, C. jejuni also controls flagellar biosynthesis by phase variation. In this st...

Staphylococcus epidermidis is a prominent commensal member of human skin microbiome and an emerging nosocomial pathogen, making it a good model organism to provide genomic insights, correlating its transition between commensalism and pathogenicity. While there are numerous studies to understand differences in commensal and pathogenic isolates, systematic efforts to understand variation and evol...

The parasite-host-environment system is dynamic, with several points of equilibrium. This makes it difficult to trace the thresholds between benefit and damage, and therefore, the definitions of commensalism, mutualism, and symbiosis become worthless. Therefore, the same concept of parasitism may encompass commensalism, mutualism, and symbiosis. Parasitism is essential for life. Life emerged as...

Behavioural flexibility has long been thought to provide advantages for animals when they invade novel environments. This hypothesis has recently received empirical support in a study of avian species introduced to New Zealand, but it remains to be determined whether behavioural flexibility is a general mechanism influencing invasion success. In this study, we examined introduction success of 6...

The virulence of many human pathogens does not seem to be an evolutionarily selected trait, but an accidental by-product of the selection that operates in another ecological context. We investigated the possibility that virulence of the extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (ExPEC) strains, which frequently cause disease in the host in which they asymptomatically colonize the intestine, i...

Microbes occupy countless ecological niches in nature. Sometimes these environments may be on or within another organism, as is the case in both microbial infections and symbiosis of mammals. Unlike pathogens that establish opportunistic infections, hundreds of human commensal bacterial species establish a lifelong cohabitation with their hosts. Although many virulence factors of infectious bac...

In addition to an increase in mean temperature, climate change models predict decreasing amplitudes of daily temperature fluctuations. In temperate regions, where daily and seasonal fluctuations are prominent, such decreases in daily temperature fluctuations can have a pronounced effect on the fitness of species and on the outcome of species interactions. In this study, the effect of a temperat...