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      Effect of hosts on competition among clones and evidence of differential selection between pathogenic and saprophytic phases in experimental populations of the wheat pathogen Phaeosphaeria nodorum

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          Abstract

          Background

          Monoculture, multi-cropping and wider use of highly resistant cultivars have been proposed as mechanisms to explain the elevated rate of evolution of plant pathogens in agricultural ecosystems. We used a mark-release-recapture experiment with the wheat pathogen Phaeosphaeria nodorum to evaluate the impact of two of these mechanisms on the evolution of a pathogen population. Nine P. nodorum isolates marked with ten microsatellite markers and one minisatellite were released onto five replicated host populations to initiate epidemics of Stagonospora nodorum leaf blotch. The experiment was carried out over two consecutive host growing seasons and two pathogen collections were made during each season.

          Results

          A total of 637 pathogen isolates matching the marked inoculants were recovered from inoculated plots over two years. Genetic diversity in the host populations affected the evolution of the corresponding P. nodorum populations. In the cultivar mixture the relative frequencies of inoculants did not change over the course of the experiment and the pathogen exhibited a low variation in selection coefficients.

          Conclusions

          Our results support the hypothesis that increasing genetic heterogeneity in host populations may retard the rate of evolution in associated pathogen populations. Our experiment also provides indirect evidence of fitness costs associated with host specialization in P. nodorum as indicated by differential selection during the pathogenic and saprophytic phases.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          BMC Evol Biol
          BMC Evolutionary Biology
          BioMed Central
          1471-2148
          2011
          1 July 2011
          : 11
          : 188
          Affiliations
          [1 ]Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich, LFW, Universitaetstrasse 2, Zürich, CH-8092, Switzerland
          [2 ]Agroscope Changins-Wädenswil Research Station ACW, P.O. Box 1012, Nyon, CH-1260 Switzerland
          [3 ]Key Lab for Biopesticide and Chemical Biology, Ministry of Education, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 350002, China
          [4 ]Fujian Key Lab of Plant Virology, Institute of Plant Virology, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 35002, China
          Article
          1471-2148-11-188
          10.1186/1471-2148-11-188
          3145600
          21718545
          08540bed-9fe9-47ae-b0b3-8d95ee0a5545
          Copyright ©2011 Sommerhalder et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

          This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

          History
          : 10 April 2011
          : 1 July 2011
          Categories
          Research Article

          Evolutionary Biology
          cultivar mixture,stagonospora nodorum,microsatellite,host selection,experimental evolution,genetic diversity

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