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Multiple Friends with Benefits: An Optimal Mutualist Management Strategy?
The American Naturalist
|June 10, 2016
Summary
In variable environments, trees maintain low-quality fungal partners as a growth strategy. This investment, even with better options, helps sustain diverse mutualistic relationships in nature.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Symbiotic Interactions
Background:
- Most natural mutualisms involve multiple species and partners.
- The persistence of low-quality mutualist partners is not well understood.
- Niche partitioning explains some diversity but not low-quality partner maintenance.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose and test a novel explanation for the maintenance of low-quality mutualist partners.
- To investigate if hosts actively maintain low-quality partners for growth maximization.
- To explore the role of environmental variability in this strategy.
Main Methods:
- Developed a mathematical model based on host tree and ectomycorrhizal fungi interactions.
- Simulated interactions under both constant and variable environmental conditions.
- Analyzed host investment strategies in response to partner quality and environmental factors.
Main Results:
- Host trees actively maintain low-quality fungal partners in variable environments.
- This strategy is employed even when higher-quality partners are available.
- Environmental variability triggers investment in low-quality partners due to saturating returns from high-quality ones.
Conclusions:
- Low-quality mutualist partners can be actively maintained by hosts as a growth-maximizing strategy.
- Environmental variability is a key factor driving the maintenance of such partnerships.
- This mechanism contributes to the maintenance of biodiversity in multispecies mutualisms.
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