Local Adaptation of Bacteriophages to Their Bacterial Hosts in Soil
Michiel Vos,1,*,
Philip J. Birkett,1
Elizabeth Birch,1
Robert I. Griffiths,2
Angus Buckling1
Microbes are incredibly abundant and diverse and are key to
ecosystem functioning, yet relatively little is known about
the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that shape their
distributions. Bacteriophages, viral parasites that lyse their
bacterial hosts, exert intense and spatially varying selection
pressures on bacteria and vice versa. We measured local adaptation
of bacteria and their associated phages in a centimeter-scale
soil population. We first demonstrate that a large proportion
of bacteria is sensitive to locally occurring phages. We then
show that sympatric phages (isolated from the same 2-gram soil
samples as the bacteria) are more infective than are phages
from samples some distance away. This study demonstrates the
importance of biotic interactions for the small-scale spatial
structuring of microbial genetic diversity in soil.
2 Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Oxford OX1 35R, UK.
* Present address: Netherlands Institute of Ecology–Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (NIOO-KNAW) Centre for Terrestrial Ecology, 6666 GA Heteren, Netherlands.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: michiel.vos{at}nioo.knaw.nl
