The extent and speed at which pathogens adapt to host resistance varies considerably. This presents a challenge for predicting when--and where--pathogen evolution may occur. While gene flow and spatially heterogeneous environments are recognized to be critical for the evolutionary potential of pathogen populations, we lack an understanding of how the two jointly shape coevolutionary trajectories between hosts and pathogens. The rust pathogen Melampsora lini infects two ecotypes of its host plant Linum marginale that occur in close proximity yet in distinct populations and habitats. In this study, we found that within-population epidemics were different between the two habitats. We then tested for pathogen local adaptation at host population and ecotype level in a reciprocal inoculation study. Even after controlling for the effect of spatial structure on infection outcome, we found strong evidence of pathogen adaptation at the host ecotype level. Moreover, sequence analysis of two pathogen infectivity loci revealed strong genetic differentiation by host ecotype but not by distance. Hence, environmental variation can be a key determinant of pathogen population genetic structure and coevolutionary dynamics and can generate strong asymmetry in infection risks through space.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 31 October 2014.
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#7,601
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#65,649
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Outputs of similar age from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
#115
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Altmetric has tracked 28,019,514 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 71st percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 11,244 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 43.0. This one is in the 32nd percentile – i.e., 32% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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