Ecological Contacts and Host Specificity Promote Replacement of Nutritional Endosymbionts in Ticks

Symbiosis with vitamin-provisioning microbes is essential for the nutrition of animals with some specialized feeding habits. While coevolution favors the interdependence between symbiotic partners, their associations are not necessarily stable: Recently acquired symbionts can replace ancestral symbi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Microbial ecology 2022-04, Vol.83 (3), p.776-788
Main Authors: Buysse, Marie, Binetruy, Florian, Leibson, Raz, Gottlieb, Yuval, Duron, Olivier
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal nutrition
Biological traits
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Coevolution
Ecology
Endosymbionts
Environmental Sciences
Francisella
Geoecology/Natural Processes
Geographical distribution
Haplotypes
Host Microbe Interactions
Host specificity
Life Sciences
Microbial Ecology
Microbiology
Nature Conservation
Nutrition
Phylogenetics
Phylogeny
Provisioning
Species
Species diversity
Specificity
Symbionts
Symbiosis
Ticks
Vitamins
Water Quality/Water Pollution
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Summary:Symbiosis with vitamin-provisioning microbes is essential for the nutrition of animals with some specialized feeding habits. While coevolution favors the interdependence between symbiotic partners, their associations are not necessarily stable: Recently acquired symbionts can replace ancestral symbionts. In this study, we demonstrate successful replacement by Francisella -like endosymbionts (-LE), a group of B-vitamin-provisioning endosymbionts, across tick communities driven by horizontal transfers. Using a broad collection of Francisella -LE-infected tick species, we determined the diversity of Francisella -LE haplotypes through a multi-locus strain typing approach and further characterized their phylogenetic relationships and their association with biological traits of their tick hosts. The patterns observed showed that Francisella -LE commonly transfer through similar ecological networks and geographic distributions shared among different tick species and, in certain cases, through preferential shuffling across congeneric tick species. Altogether, these findings reveal the importance of geographic, ecological, and phylogenetic proximity in shaping the replacement pattern in which new nutritional symbioses are initiated.
ISSN:0095-3628
1432-184X
DOI:10.1007/s00248-021-01773-0