Kin recognition in an annual plant.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Dudley SA
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2104794 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundThe stability of cooperative interactions among different species can be compromised by cheating. In the plant-mycorrhizal fungi symbiosis, a single mycorrhizal network may interact with many plants, providing the opportunity for individual plants to cheat by obtaining nutrients from the fungi without donating carbon. Here we determine whether kin selection may favour plant investment in the mycorrhizal network, reducing the incentive to cheat when relatives interact with a single network.Methodology/principal findingsWe show that mycorrhizal network size and root colonization were greater when Ambrosia artemisiifolia L. was grown with siblings compared to strangers. Soil fungal abundance was positively correlated with group leaf nitrogen, and increased root colonization was associated with a reduced number of pathogen-induced root lesions, indicating greater benefit to plants grown with siblings.Conclusions/significancePlants can benefit their relatives through investment in mycorrhizal fungi, and kin selection in plants could promote the persistence of the mycorrhizal symbiosis.
| S-EPMC3460938 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Triphysaria is a facultative parasitic plant in the Orobanchaceae that parasitizes the roots of a wide range of host plants including Arabidopsis, Medicago, rice and maize. The important exception to this broad host range is that Triphysaria rarely parasitize other Triphysaria. We explored self and kin recognition in Triphysaria versicolor and showed that exudates collected from roots of host species, Arabidopsis thaliana and Medicago truncatula, induced haustorium development when applied to the roots of Triphysaria seedlings in vitro while those collected from Triphysaria did not. In mixed exudate experiments, Triphysaria exudates did not inhibit the haustorium-inducing activity of those from host roots. Interestingly, when roots of Triphysaria seedlings were treated with either horseradish peroxidase or fungal laccase, the extracts showed haustorium-inducing factor (HIF) activity, suggesting that Triphysaria roots contain the proper substrates for producing HIFs. Transgenic Triphysaria roots overexpressing a fungal laccase gene TvLCC1 showed an increased responsiveness to a known HIF, 2,6-dimethoxy benzoquinone (DMBQ), in developing haustoria. Our results indicate kin recognition in Triphysaria is associated with the lack of active HIFs in root exudates. Treatment of Triphysaria roots with enzymatic oxidases activates or releases molecules that are HIFs. This study shows that exogenously applied oxidases can activate HIFs in Triphysaria roots that had no previous HIF activity. Further studies are necessary to determine if differential oxidase activities in host and parasite roots account for the kin recognition in haustorium development.
| S-EPMC7573212 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The evolution of sociality and altruism is enigmatic because cooperators are constantly threatened by cheaters who benefit from cooperation without incurring its full cost [1, 2]. Kin recognition is the ability to recognize and cooperate with genetically close relatives. It has also been proposed as a potential mechanism that limits cheating [3, 4], but there has been no direct experimental support for that possibility. Here we show that kin recognition protects cooperators against cheaters. The social amoebae Dictyostelium discoideum cooperate by forming multicellular aggregates that develop into fruiting bodies of viable spores and dead stalk cells. Cheaters preferentially differentiate into spores while their victims die as stalk cells in chimeric aggregates. We engineered syngeneic cheaters and victims that differed only in their kin-recognition genes, tgrB1 and tgrC1, and in a single cheater allele and found that the victims escaped exploitation by different types of nonkin cheaters. This protection depends on kin-recognition-mediated segregation because it is compromised when we disrupt strain segregation. These findings provide direct evidence for the role of kin recognition in cheater control and suggest a mechanism for the maintenance of stable cooperative systems.
| S-EPMC3759992 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Though recent work has demonstrated that plants can recognize species, kin versus strangers, and self/non-self roots, no mechanism for identity recognition in plants has yet been found. Here we examined the role of soluble chemicals in signaling among roots. Utilizing Arabidopsis thaliana, we exposed young seedlings to liquid media containing exudates from siblings, strangers (non-siblings), or only their own exudates. In one experiment, root secretions were inhibited by sodium orthovanadate and root length and number of lateral roots were measured. In a second experiment, responses to siblings, strangers, and their own exudates were measured for several accessions (genotypes), and the traits of length of the longest lateral root and hypocotyl length were also measured. The exposure of plants to the root exudates of strangers induced greater lateral root formation than exposure of plants to sibling exudates. Stranger recognition was abolished upon treatment with the secretion inhibitor. In one experiment, plants exposed to sibling or stranger exudates have shorter roots than plants only exposed to their own exudates. This self/non-self recognition response was not affected by the secretion inhibitor. The results demonstrate that that kin recognition and self/non-self are two separate identity recognition systems involving soluble chemicals. Kin recognition requires active secretion by roots.
| S-EPMC2881236 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Relatedness strongly influences social behaviors in a wide variety of species. For most species, the highest typical degree of relatedness is between full siblings with 50% shared genes. However, this is poorly understood in species with unusually high relatedness between individuals: clonal organisms. Although there has been some investigation into clonal invertebrates and yeast, nothing is known about kin selection in clonal vertebrates. We show that a clonal fish, the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa), can distinguish between different clonal lineages, associating with genetically identical, sister clones, and use multiple sensory modalities. Also, they scale their aggressive behaviors according to the relatedness to other females: they are more aggressive to non-related clones. Our results demonstrate that even in species with very small genetic differences between individuals, kin recognition can be adaptive. Their discriminatory abilities and regulation of costly behaviors provides a powerful example of natural selection in species with limited genetic diversity.
| S-EPMC4970819 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Recognition and response to prospective competitors are crucial variables that must be considered in resource distribution and utilization in plant communities. Associated behaviors are largely mediated through the exchange of low-molecular weight exudates. These cues can significantly alter the root system architecture (RSA) between neighboring plants and are routinely sensitive enough to distinguish between plants of the same or different accessions, a phenomenon known as kin recognition (KR). Such refined discrimination of identity, based on the composition and detection of patterns of exudate signals is remarkable and provides insight into the chemical ecology of plant-plant interactions. The discovery that KR occurs in Arabidopsis thaliana provides a model system to resolve many of the mechanistic questions associated with this process. We hypothesized that the low-molecular weight cues which direct changes to the RSA during KR was driven by nutrient availability. Here we present evidence in support of a nutrient-inducible model for KR. Our findings underscore how exudate production and detection are influenced by nutrient availability as well as how this information is integrated into 'decisions' about competition and root system architecture which may have broader impacts on community composition.
| S-EPMC5058466 | biostudies-other
Project description:Social interactions among individuals are widespread, both in natural and domestic populations. As a result, trait values of individuals may be affected by genes in other individuals, a phenomenon known as indirect genetic effects (IGEs). IGEs can be estimated using linear mixed models. The traditional IGE model assumes that an individual interacts equally with all its partners, whether kin or strangers. There is abundant evidence, however, that individuals behave differently towards kin as compared with strangers, which agrees with predictions from kin-selection theory. With a mix of kin and strangers, therefore, IGEs estimated from a traditional model may be incorrect, and selection based on those estimates will be suboptimal. Here we investigate whether genetic parameters for IGEs are statistically identifiable in group-structured populations when IGEs differ between kin and strangers, and develop models to estimate such parameters. First, we extend the definition of total breeding value and total heritable variance to cases where IGEs depend on relatedness. Next, we show that the full set of genetic parameters is not identifiable when IGEs differ between kin and strangers. Subsequently, we present a reduced model that yields estimates of the total heritable effects on kin, on non-kin and on all social partners of an individual, as well as the total heritable variance for response to selection. Finally we discuss the consequences of analysing data in which IGEs depend on relatedness using a traditional IGE model, and investigate group structures that may allow estimation of the full set of genetic parameters when IGEs depend on kin.
| S-EPMC3907106 | biostudies-other
Project description:Kin recognition, the ability to distinguish kin from non-kin, can facilitate cooperation between relatives. Evolutionary theory predicts that polymorphism in recognition cues, which is essential for effective recognition, would be unstable. Individuals carrying rare recognition cues would benefit less from social interactions than individuals with common cues, leading to loss of the genetic-cue diversity. We test this evolutionary hypothesis in Dictyostelium discoideum, which forms multicellular fruiting bodies by aggregation and utilizes two polymorphic membrane proteins to facilitate preferential cooperation. Surprisingly, we find that rare recognition variants are tolerated and maintain their frequencies among incompatible majority during development. Although the rare variants are initially excluded from the aggregates, they subsequently rejoin the aggregate and produce spores. Social cheating is also refrained in late development, thus limiting the cost of chimerism. Our results suggest a potential mechanism to sustain the evolutionary stability of kin-recognition genes and to suppress cheating.
| S-EPMC4448137 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Theory predicts that individuals behave altruistically towards their relatives. Hence, some form of kin recognition is useful for individuals to optimize their behavior. In species that display bi-parental care and are subject to extra-pair matings, kin recognition theoretically can allow cuckolded fathers to reduce their parental investment, and thus optimize their fitness. Whether this is possible remains unclear in birds. This study investigates whether males provide differential parental care depending on relatedness, as a proxy to recognizing chicks in their nest as kin or not. We cross-fostered House sparrow (Passer domesticus) chicks after hatching, and then expected that fathers would show a decrease in their parental efforts when tending to a clutch of unrelated offspring. House sparrow males are able to adjust their parental care to the identity of their partner, making them an ideal study species. However, there was no significant effect of relatedness on provisioning rates. This suggests that sparrows may not be capable of kin recognition, or at least do not display kin discrimination despite its apparent evolutionary advantage.
| S-EPMC6808440 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Typical judgments involving faces are disrupted by inversion, with the Thatcher illusion serving as a compelling example. In two experiments, we examined how inversion affects allocentric kin recognition-the ability to judge the degree of genetic relatedness of others. In the first experiment, participants judged whether pairs of photographs of children portrayed siblings or unrelated children. Half of the pairs were siblings, half were unrelated. In three experimental conditions, photographs were viewed in upright orientation, flipped around a horizontal axis, or rotated 180°. Neither rotation nor flipping had any detectable effect on allocentric kin recognition. In the second experiment, participants judged pairs of photographs of adult women. Half of the pairs were sisters, half were unrelated. We again found no significant effect of facial inversion. Unlike almost all other face judgments, judgments of kinship from facial appearance do not rely on perceptual cues disrupted by inversion, suggesting that they rely more on spatially localized cues rather than "holistic" cues. We conclude that kin recognition is not simply a byproduct of other face perception abilities. We discuss the implications for cue combination models of other facial judgments that are affected by inversion.
| S-EPMC4578574 | biostudies-literature