Travers Cook, Thomas

I am interested in the genomic consequences of species interactions, and coevolutionary dynamics amongst antagonistic and cooperative species. My PhD research concerns the killer phenotype phenomenon of fungi. Killer phenotypes involve the production of allelopathic toxins, used as an interference strategy to eliminate niche-sharing competitors, which may in-turn provide an intraspecific social function. To do this, fungi often rely on a set of conflicting intracellular viruses that together encode toxin production.

Thus, fungal competition and indirect cooperation are dependent on an unstable cooperative interaction between their endosymbionts. To complicate the system more, toxin production is only beneficial if there are niche-sharing toxin-sensitive competitors in the vicinity. The phenomenon is therefore a context dependent mutualism with an asymmetric dependence of different parties. The underlying biochemistry of killers and antagonistic allelopathy are widely studied, whilst the evolutionary ecology of the various interactions is mostly uncharted territory.

For my PhD, I am exploring the eco-evolutionary consequences of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae killer system in natural populations, and searching for evidence of coevolution in the system.