ORCID Profile
0000-0002-7482-4438
Current Organisations
The University of Auckland
,
University of Lincoln
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-09-2015
DOI: 10.1007/S10886-015-0629-Z
Abstract: Recent work suggests that Drosophila and Saccharomyces yeasts may establish a mutualistic association, and that this is driven by chemical communication. While in idual volatiles have been implicated in the attraction of D. melanogaster, the semiochemicals affecting the behavior of the sibling species D. simulans are less well characterized. Here, we scrutinized a broad range of volatiles produced by attractive and repulsive yeasts to experimentally evaluate the chemical nature of communication between these species. When grown in liquid or on agar-solidified grape juice, attraction to S. cerevisiae was driven primarily by 3-methylbutyl acetate (isoamyl acetate) and repulsion by acetic acid, a known attractant to D. melanogaster (also known as vinegar fly). By using T-maze choice tests and synthetic compounds, we showed that these responses are strongly influenced by compound concentration. Moreover, the behavioral response is impacted further by the chemical context of the environment. Thus, chemical communication between yeasts and flies is complex, and is not driven simply by the presence of single volatiles, but modulated by compound interactions. The ecological context of chemical communication needs to be taken into consideration when testing for ecologically realistic responses.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 17-07-2014
DOI: 10.1111/ELE.12331
Abstract: Niche construction theory explains how organisms' niche modifications may feed back to affect their evolutionary trajectories. In theory, the evolution of other species accessing the same modified niche may also be affected. We propose that this niche construction may be a general mechanism driving the evolution of mutualisms. Drosophilid flies benefit from accessing yeast‐infested fruits, but the consequences of this interaction for yeasts are unknown. We reveal high levels of variation among strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in their ability to modify fruits and attract Drosophila simulans . More attractive yeasts are dispersed more frequently, both in the lab and in the field, and flies associated with more attractive yeasts have higher fecundity. Although there may be multiple natural yeast and fly species interactions, our controlled assays in the lab and field provide evidence of a mutualistic interaction, facilitated by the yeast's niche modification.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2021
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 20-10-2022
DOI: 10.1101/2022.10.17.512634
Abstract: Genomic surveillance provides a data source complementary to contact tracing to resolve putative transmission chains. However, the role of within-host ersity in transmission is understudied due to a lack of experimental and clinical datasets that capture within-host ersity in both donors and recipients. Here, we assess the utility of deep-sequenced genomic surveillance within a mouse transmission model where the gastrointestinal pathogen Citrobacter rodentium was controllably spread during co-housing of infected and naïve animals. We observed that within-host variants were maintained over multiple transmission steps until fixation or elimination. We present a model for inferring the likelihood that a given pair of s les are linked by transmission, by comparing the allelic frequency at variant genomic loci . Our data affirm that within-host single nucleotide variants (iSNVs) can repeatedly pass from donor to recipient along the transmission chain, and the mere sharing of iSNVs between different transmission pairs offers limited confidence in identifying a transmission pair. Beyond the presence and absence of within-host variants, we show that differences arising in the relative abundance of iSNVs can infer transmission pairs with high precision. An important component of our approach is that the inference is based solely on sequence data, without incorporating epidemiological or demographic data for context. Our model, which substantially reduces the number of comparisons a contact tracer needs to consider, may enhance the accuracy of contact tracing and other epidemiological processes, including early detection of emerging transmission clusters.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 25-09-2013
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Matthew Goddard.