Defensive insect symbiont leads to cascading extinctions and community collapse.
Defensive insect symbiont leads to cascading extinctions and community collapse.
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DOI：
10.1111/ele.12616
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发表时间：
2016-07
期刊：
影响因子：
8.8
通讯作者：
Frago E
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Sanders D;Kehoe R;van Veen FF;McLean A;Godfray HC;Dicke M;Gols R;Frago E
动物经常与微生物共生，保护它们免受捕食、寄生或病原体感染。昆虫中这些相互作用的研究大多集中在共生体感染对天敌的直接影响上，而没有研究整个群落的影响。在这里，我们探讨了防御性共生体对由三种蚜虫及其相关的专业寄生蜂组成的实验群落的种群动态和物种灭绝的影响。我们发现，将一种具有保护性（而非非保护性）表型的细菌共生体引入一种蚜虫物种，使其能够逃离天敌并增加密度。这改变了三种蚜虫的相对密度，导致了另外两种寄生蜂的灭绝。我们的研究结果表明，防御性共生体可以在实验群落中引起灭绝级联，因此可能在野外消费草食动物群落的稳定中发挥重要作用。
Animals often engage in mutualistic associations with microorganisms that protect them from predation, parasitism or pathogen infection. Studies of these interactions in insects have mostly focussed on the direct effects of symbiont infection on natural enemies without studying community‐wide effects. Here, we explore the effect of a defensive symbiont on population dynamics and species extinctions in an experimental community composed of three aphid species and their associated specialist parasitoids. We found that introducing a bacterial symbiont with a protective (but not a non‐protective) phenotype into one aphid species led to it being able to escape from its natural enemy and increase in density. This changed the relative density of the three aphid species which resulted in the extinction of the two other parasitoid species. Our results show that defensive symbionts can cause extinction cascades in experimental communities and so may play a significant role in the stability of consumer‐herbivore communities in the field.