Rich resource environment of fish farms facilitates phenotypic variation and virulence in an opportunistic fish pathogen.

Phenotypic variation is suggested to facilitate the persistence of environmentally growing pathogens under environmental change. Here, we hypothesized that the intensive farming environment induces higher phenotypic variation in microbial pathogens than natural environment, because of high stochasticity for growth and stronger survival selection compared to the natural environment. We tested the hypothesis with an opportunistic fish pathogen isolated either from fish farms or from natural waters.

Infective prey leads to a partial role reversal in a predator-prey interaction.

An infective prey has the potential to infect, kill and consume its predator. Such a prey-predator relationship fundamentally differs from the predator-prey interaction because the prey can directly profit from the predator as a growth resource. Here we present a population dynamics model of partial role reversal in the predator-prey interaction of two species, the bottom dwelling marine deposit feeder sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus and an important food source for the sea cucumber but potentially infective bacterium Vibrio splendidus.

Dual-stressor selection alters eco-evolutionary dynamics in experimental communities.

Recognizing when and how rapid evolution drives ecological change is fundamental for our understanding of almost all ecological and evolutionary processes such as community assembly, genetic diversification and the stability of communities and ecosystems. Generally, rapid evolutionary change is driven through selection on genetic variation and is affected by evolutionary constraints, such as tradeoffs and pleiotropic effects, all contributing to the overall rate of evolutionary change. Each of these processes can be influenced by the presence of multiple environmental stressors reducing a population's reproductive output.

Outside-host phage therapy as a biological control against environmental infectious diseases.

Background: Environmentally growing pathogens present an increasing threat for human health, wildlife and food production. Treating the hosts with antibiotics or parasitic bacteriophages fail to eliminate diseases that grow also in the outside-host environment. However, bacteriophages could be utilized to suppress the pathogen population sizes in the outside-host environment in order to prevent disease outbreaks.

Adaptation to fluctuations in temperature by nine species of bacteria.

Rapid environmental fluctuations are ubiquitous in the wild, yet majority of experimental studies mostly consider effects of slow fluctuations on organism. To test the evolutionary consequences of fast fluctuations, we conducted nine independent experimental evolution experiments with bacteria. Experimental conditions were same for all species, and we allowed them to evolve either in fluctuating temperature alternating rapidly between 20°C and 40°C or at constant 30°C temperature.

Evolutionary contribution to coexistence of competitors in microbial food webs.

The theory of species coexistence is a key concept in ecology that has received much attention. The role of rapid evolution for determining species coexistence is still poorly understood although evolutionary change on ecological time-scales has the potential to change almost any ecological process. The influence of evolution on coexistence can be especially pronounced in microbial communities where organisms often have large population sizes and short generation times.

Within-host evolution decreases virulence in an opportunistic bacterial pathogen.

Background: Pathogens evolve in a close antagonistic relationship with their hosts. The conventional theory proposes that evolution of virulence is highly dependent on the efficiency of direct host-to-host transmission. Many opportunistic pathogens, however, are not strictly dependent on the hosts due to their ability to reproduce in the free-living environment.

Protist predation can select for bacteria with lowered susceptibility to infection by lytic phages.

Background: Consumer-resource interactions constitute one of the most common types of interspecific antagonistic interaction. In natural communities, complex species interactions are likely to affect the outcomes of reciprocal co-evolution between consumers and their resource species. Individuals face multiple enemies simultaneously, and consequently they need to adapt to several different types of enemy pressures.

Top-down effects of a lytic bacteriophage and protozoa on bacteria in aqueous and biofilm phases.

Lytic bacteriophages and protozoan predators are the major causes of bacterial mortality in natural microbial communities, which also makes them potential candidates for biological control of bacterial pathogens. However, little is known about the relative impact of bacteriophages and protozoa on the dynamics of bacterial biomass in aqueous and biofilm phases. Here, we studied the temporal and spatial dynamics of bacterial biomass in a microcosm experiment where opportunistic pathogenic bacteria Serratia marcescens was exposed to particle-feeding ciliates, surface-feeding amoebas, and lytic bacteriophages for 8 weeks, ca.

Invasion ability and disease dynamics of environmentally growing opportunistic pathogens under outside-host competition.

Most theories of the evolution of virulence concentrate on obligatory host-pathogen relationship. Yet, many pathogens replicate in the environment outside-host where they compete with non-pathogenic forms. Thus, replication and competition in the outside-host environment may have profound influence on the evolution of virulence and disease dynamics.

Coincidental loss of bacterial virulence in multi-enemy microbial communities.

The coincidental virulence evolution hypothesis suggests that outside-host selection, such as predation, parasitism and resource competition can indirectly affect the virulence of environmentally-growing bacterial pathogens. While there are some examples of coincidental environmental selection for virulence, it is also possible that the resource acquisition and enemy defence is selecting against it. To test these ideas we conducted an evolutionary experiment by exposing the opportunistic pathogen bacterium Serratia marcescens to the particle-feeding ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila, the surface-feeding amoeba Acanthamoeba castellanii, and the lytic bacteriophage Semad11, in all possible combinations in a simulated pond water environment.

Association of colony morphotypes with virulence, growth and resistance against protozoan predation in the fish pathogen Flavobacterium columnare.

Many opportunistic pathogens can alternate between inside- and outside-host environments during their life cycle. The opportunistic fish pathogen Flavobacterium columnare is an inhabitant of the natural microbial community and causes significant yearly losses in aquaculture worldwide. The bacterium grows in varying colony morphotypes that are associated with either virulence (rhizoid type) or resistance to starvation and phages (rough type).

Loss of competition in the outside host environment generates outbreaks of environmental opportunist pathogens.

Environmentally transmitted pathogens face ecological interactions (e.g., competition, predation, parasitism) in the outside-host environment and host immune system during infection.

The relative importance of competition and predation in environment characterized by resource pulses--an experimental test with a microbial community.

Background: Resource availability and predation are believed to affect community dynamics and composition. Although the effects of resource availability and predation on prey communities are usually studied in isolation, these factors can also have interactive effects, especially since the outcome of competition under shared predation is expected to depend on resource availability. However, there are few experimental studies that test the interactive roles of resources and predation on dynamics of more complex multispecies communities.

Resource availability and competition shape the evolution of survival and growth ability in a bacterial community.

Resource availability is one of the main factors determining the ecological dynamics of populations or species. Fluctuations in resource availability can increase or decrease the intensity of resource competition. Resource availability and competition can also cause evolutionary changes in life-history traits.

Fluctuating temperature leads to evolution of thermal generalism and preadaptation to novel environments.

Environmental fluctuations can select for generalism, which is also hypothesized to increase organisms' ability to invade novel environments. Here, we show that across a range of temperatures, opportunistic bacterial pathogen Serratia marcescens that evolved in fluctuating temperature (daily variation between 24°C and 38°C, mean 31°C) outperforms the strains that evolved in constant temperature (31°C). The growth advantage was also evident in novel environments in the presence of parasitic viruses and predatory protozoans, but less clear in the presence of stressful chemicals.

Phage-driven loss of virulence in a fish pathogenic bacterium.

Parasites provide a selective pressure during the evolution of their hosts, and mediate a range of effects on ecological communities. Due to their short generation time, host-parasite interactions may also drive the virulence of opportunistic bacteria. This is especially relevant in systems where high densities of hosts and parasites on different trophic levels (e.

Outside-host growth of pathogens attenuates epidemiological outbreaks.

Opportunist saprotrophic pathogens differ from obligatory pathogens due to their capability in host-independent growth in environmental reservoirs. Thus, the outside-host environment potentially influences host-pathogen dynamics. Despite the socio-economical importance of these pathogens, theory on their dynamics is practically missing.

Interactive effects between diet and genotypes of host and pathogen define the severity of infection.

Host resistance and parasite virulence are influenced by multiple interacting factors in complex natural communities. Yet, these interactive effects are seldom studied concurrently, resulting in poor understanding of host-pathogen-environment dynamics. Here, we investigated how the level of opportunist pathogen virulence, strength of host immunity and the host condition manipulated via diet affect the survival of wood tiger moth Parasemia plantaginis (Arctidae).

Temporal changes in species interactions in simple aquatic bacterial communities.

Background: Organisms modify their environment and in doing so change the quantity and possibly the quality of available resources. Due to the two-way relationship between organisms and their resource environment, and the complexity it brings to biological communities, measuring species interactions reliably in any biological system is a challenging task. As the resource environment changes, the intensity and even the sign of interactions may vary in time.

Life history trade-offs and relaxed selection can decrease bacterial virulence in environmental reservoirs.

Pathogen virulence is usually thought to evolve in reciprocal selection with the host. While this might be true for obligate pathogens, the life histories of opportunistic pathogens typically alternate between within-host and outside-host environments during the infection-transmission cycle. As a result, opportunistic pathogens are likely to experience conflicting selection pressures across different environments, and this could affect their virulence through life-history trait correlations.

Species dynamics alter community diversity-biomass stability relationships.

The relationship between community diversity and biomass variability remains a crucial ecological topic, with positive, negative and neutral diversity-stability relationships reported from empirical studies. Theory highlights the relative importance of Species-Species or Species-Environment interactions in driving diversity-stability patterns. Much previous work is based on an assumption of identical (stable) species-level dynamics.

Pulsed-resource dynamics constrain the evolution of predator-prey interactions.

Although temporal variability in the physical environment plays a major role in population fluctuations, little is known about how it drives the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of species interactions. We studied experimentally how extrinsic resource pulses affect evolutionary and ecological dynamics between the prey bacterium Serratia marcescens and the predatory protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila. Predation increased the frequency of defensive, nonpigmented prey types, which bore competitive costs in terms of reduced maximum growth rate, most in a constant-resource environment.

High temperature and bacteriophages can indirectly select for bacterial pathogenicity in environmental reservoirs.

The coincidental evolution hypothesis predicts that traits connected to bacterial pathogenicity could be indirectly selected outside the host as a correlated response to abiotic environmental conditions or different biotic species interactions. To investigate this, an opportunistic bacterial pathogen, Serratia marcescens, was cultured in the absence and presence of the lytic bacteriophage PPV (Podoviridae) at 25°C and 37°C for four weeks (N = 5). At the end, we measured changes in bacterial phage-resistance and potential virulence traits, and determined the pathogenicity of all bacterial selection lines in the Parasemia plantaginis insect model in vivo.