Toxic Killers
Antagonistic species interactions can have fundamental effects on ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations. The aim of this project is to test how predicted coevolutionary processes determine the competitive dynamics of the yeast strains (“killer yeast” system).The target multi-species model system comprises of Saccharomyces cerevisiae as the host, two double stranded RNA viruses (dsRNA L-A virus and dsRNA M virus), that when together in a host cell convert S. cerevisiae to a lethal toxin-producing “killer yeast” that is competitively superior.
Using Drosophila sp. and Saccharomyces cerevisiae as model organism, we investigate general mechanisms driving the evolution of mutualism. We propose that this niche construction may be a general mechanism driving the evolution of mutualisms.
