virus infection suppresses nicotiana benthamiana adaptive phenotypic plasticity病毒感染抑制烟草benthamiana适应性表型可塑性.pdfVIP

Virus Infection Suppresses Nicotiana benthamiana Adaptive Phenotypic Plasticity ´ 1 1,2 Stephanie Bedhomme *, Santiago F. Elena ´ ´ 1 Instituto de Biologıa Molecular y Celular de Plantas, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientıficas-Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain, 2 The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States of America Abstract Competition and parasitism are two important selective forces that shape life-histories, migration rates and population dynamics. Recently, it has been shown in various pathosystems that parasites can modify intraspecific competition, thus generating an indirect cost of parasitism. Here, we investigated if this phenomenon was present in a plant-potyvirus system using two viruses of different virulence (Tobacco etch virus and Turnip mosaic virus). Moreover, we asked if parasitism interacted with the shade avoidance syndrome, the plant-specific phenotypic plasticity in response to intraspecific competition. Our results indicate that the modification of intraspecific competition by parasitism is not present in the Nicotiana benthamiana – potyvirus system and suggests that this phenomenon is not universal but depends on the peculiarities of each pathosystem. However, whereas the healthy N. benthamiana presented a clear shade avoidance syndrome, this phenotypic plasticity totally disappeared when the plants were infected with TEV and TuMV, very likely resulting in a fitness loss and being another form of indirect cost of parasitism. This result suggests that the suppression or the alteration of adaptive phenotypic