First, G. sagittariae feed on multiple host plant species that are not closely related, but we nevertheless found no population differentiation among parasitoids hatching from larvae collected on different plants.
We addressed this question using experimental infections of host plants with multiple races.
Besides the plant growth stimulation effect, due to the enhanced mineral nutrition, host plants gain multiple benefits from AM symbiosis, i.e. protection from pathogens [ 6], tolerance to water stress [ 7, 8] and pollutants[ 9, 10], and take advantage of an improved soil structure [ 11, 12].
Taken together, it is expected that multiple virulence-associated genes control pathogen infection in host plants.
Recent work on the diversity of plant fungal connections in forests revealed multiple levels of nestedness in the associations between host plants and fungal symbionts (Toju et al. 2014; Beiler et al. 2015).
We inferred a multiple gene phylogeny of anther smut strains from 21 host plants from several geographic origins, complementing a previous study on the delimitation of fungal species and their host specificities.
Genetic studies highlighted the existence of multiple determinants of specificity and compatibility between fungal endophytes and host plants (Chung et al. 1997; Schardl et al. 2004).
As demonstrated in our study, these belowground induced selection pressures may lead to local adaptation of the aboveground living herbivores to the host plants' specific belowground biotic conditions when exposure lasts over multiple generations.
Two recent meta-analyses quantified responses of ant-plants to the absence of ants across multiple systems and explored the effects of different traits on the magnitude of ant protection for their host plants [27], [28].
Most remarkable, however, are their host plants.
