The dimensionality of infection networks among viruses infecting microbial eukaryotes and bacteria

Diverse viruses and their hosts are interconnected through complex networks of infection, which are thought to influence ecological and evolutionary processes, but the principles underlying infection network structure are not well understood. Here we focus on network dimensionality and how it varies...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology letters 2024-02, Vol.27 (2), p.e14383-n/a
Main Authors: Edwards, Kyle F., Hayward, Colleen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bacteria
Biological Evolution
coevolution
Ecological effects
Eukaryota
Eukaryotes
host range
Infections
Microorganisms
modularity
nestedness
Networks
phage
Phytoplankton
prasinovirus
resource partitioning
Viruses
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Diverse viruses and their hosts are interconnected through complex networks of infection, which are thought to influence ecological and evolutionary processes, but the principles underlying infection network structure are not well understood. Here we focus on network dimensionality and how it varies across 37 networks of viruses infecting eukaryotic phytoplankton and bacteria. We find that dimensionality is often strikingly low, with most networks being one‐ or two‐dimensional, although dimensionality increases with network richness, suggesting that the true dimensionality of natural systems is higher. Low‐dimensional networks generally exhibit a mixture of host partitioning among viruses and nestededness of host ranges. Networks of bacteria‐infecting and eukaryote‐infecting viruses possess comparable distributions of dimensionality and prevalence of nestedness, indicating that fundamentals of network structure are similar among domains of life and different viral lineages. The relative simplicity of many infection networks suggests that coevolutionary dynamics are often driven by a modest number of underlying mechanisms. Diverse viruses and their hosts occur in networks of cross‐infection, but the processes structuring these networks are not well understood. Here we quantify network dimensionality for viruses infecting microbial eukaryotes and bacteria, and we find that low dimensionality is surprisingly common. This implies that network structure can often be explained with a small number of mechanisms, which may be revealed by analysing dimensionality in combination with genetic or phenotypic diversity.
ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/ele.14383