Journal
FEMS MICROBIOLOGY ECOLOGY
Volume 94, Issue 5, Pages -Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/femsec/fiy060
Keywords
bacterium; Flavobacterium columnare; fish disease; interference competition; qPCR; resource competition
Categories
Funding
- Academy of Finland [260704, 294666]
- Centre of Excellence in Biological Interactions [252411]
- Finnish Cultural Foundation
- Kone Foundation
- Academy of Finland (AKA) [260704, 294666, 260704, 294666] Funding Source: Academy of Finland (AKA)
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Understanding ecological and epidemiological factors driving pathogen evolution in contemporary time scales is a major challenge in modern health management. Pathogens that replicate outside the hosts are subject to selection imposed by ambient environmental conditions. Increased nutrient levels could increase pathogen virulence by pre-adapting for efficient use of resources upon contact to a nutrient rich host or by favouring transmission of fast-growing virulent strains. We measured changes in virulence and competition in Flavobacterium columnare, a bacterial pathogen of freshwater fish, under high and low nutrient levels. To test competition between strains in genotype mixtures, we developed a quantitative real-time PCR assay. We found that a virulent strain maintained its virulence and outcompeted less virulent strains independent of the nutrient level and resource renewal rate while a less virulent strain further lost virulence in chemostats under low nutrient level and over long-term serial culture under high nutrient level. Our results suggest that increased outside-host nutrient levels might maintain virulence in less virulent strains and increase their contribution to epidemics in aquaculture. The results highlight a need to further explore the role of resource in the outside-host environment in maintaining strain diversity and driving evolution of virulence among environmentally growing pathogens.
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