Natural and Experimental Coevolution between the Invasive Garden Ant and its Parasites CLUSTER: "Experimental evolution and natural variation of Bacillus-invertebrate interactions"

该项目的目的是研究入侵花园蚂蚁及其真菌和细菌宿主共同进化的空间和时间模式。当这种反物种被引入新的地点时，它经历了适应寄生虫的丧失，因为它从自然寄生虫中释放出来，并遇到了新的寄生虫，这些寄生虫来自引入的范围，但尚未适应新的宿主物种(“中断的共同进化”)。因此，每次引入都通过建立新的宿主和寄生虫的组合来建立新的共同进化军备竞赛的起点。我们将通过分离田间真菌和细菌寄生虫，研究这场军备竞赛在不同年龄、大小、遗传多样性和入侵蚂蚁在物种群落中的优势地位的种群中的结果。为了确定不同种群的“共同进化的紧密性”，我们将在标准化的实验室条件下对从相同和不同田间种群采样的宿主和寄生虫进行感染，并测试寄生虫的致病性和宿主个人和集体(社会)免疫防御。我们将在两年内的两个时间点(时间方面)跨种群(空间方面)和相同种群进行测试。我们还将进行一项实验进化研究，根据寄主的遗传多样性和生态优势，确定真菌(金龟子绿僵菌)和细菌(苏云金杆菌)寄生虫对入侵花园蚂蚁的适应速度。我们将分析寄生虫致病性的变化以及随着时间的推移相应的基因变化。

Aim of the proposed project is to study spatial and temporal patterns of coevolution in theinvasive garden ant, Lasius neglectus, and its fungal and bacterial hosts. When this antspecies is introduced into new sites, it experiences a loss of adapted parasites, as it is freedfrom its natural parasites (“parasite release”) and encounters new parasites native to theintroduced range that are not yet adapted to the new host species (“disrupted coevolution”).Each introduction thus sets the starting point of a new coevolutionary arms race by buildingnew combinations of hosts and parasites. We will study the outcome of this arms race inpopulations differing in their age, size, genetic diversity and dominance of the invasivegarden ant in the species community, by isolation of field fungal and bacterial parasites. Todetermine the “tightness of coevolution” in the different populations, we will then performinfections of the hosts and parasites sampled from the same and different field populationsunder standardised laboratory conditions, and test for parasite pathogenicity and hostindividual and collective (social) immune defences. We will test both across populations(spatial aspects) and the same populations for two time points in a distance of two years(temporal aspect). We will also perform an experimental evolution study, in which wedetermine the speed of adaptation of fungal (Metarhizium anisopliae) and bacterial (Bacillusthuringiensis) parasites to the invasive garden ant depending on the host genetic diversityand its ecological dominance. We will analyse changes in parasite pathogenicity and thecorresponding genetic changes over time.