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Content with tag host-symbiont interactions .

“More Than Meets the Eye”: Cryptic diversity and contrasting patterns of host-specificity in feather mites inhabiting seabirds

Feather mites are useful models for studying speciation due to their high diversity and strong degree of host specialization. However, studies to date have focused on the evolution of higher-level mite taxa while much hidden diversity likely occurs at the level of host genera and species. In this study, the diversity and evolution of feather mites infesting six sympatric seabird species from six genera, breeding in the Cape Verde archipelago, were examined.

Infrequent major host switches have strong macroevolutionary consequences for symbionts

Highly host-specific symbionts are very rarely found except with their typical host species. Although switches to new hosts are rare and difficult to detect, a switch to a host phylogenetically distant from the original one could allow diversification of the symbionts onto the new host lineage.

Opening the doors of parasitology journals to other symbionts

Intimate symbiotic relationships between species (e.g., between a larger ‘host’ and a smaller ‘symbiont’) span the range from mutualism to parasitism. The nature of a symbiotic relationship is not an intrinsic trait of the species involved, but rather the outcome of their interaction. Opening the doors of parasitology journals to other symbionts would be a decisive first step for parasitologists to fully embrace the study of other symbionts.

Vertical transmission in feather mites

The consequences of symbiont transmission strategies are better understood than their adaptive causes. Feather mites are permanent ectosymbionts of birds assumed to transmit mainly vertically and massively from parents to offspring. This may seem maladaptive because of the low survival expectancies of chicks compared to bird parents. Why, then, do feather mites have this mass transmission to nestlings? Here, the transmission of Proctophyllodes doleophyes is studied in two European populations...

Infrapopulation size explains genetic diversity in a host-symbiont non-model system

Understanding what shapes variation in genetic diversity among species remains a major challenge in evolutionary ecology, and it has been seldom studied in parasites and other host-symbiont systems. Here, mtDNA variation has been studied in a host-symbiont non-model system.
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