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Macroevolution of symbiosis as self-organization of superspecies system controlled by natural selection

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Abstract

Mutualistic symbioses are convenient models for analyzing the ecological-genetic mechanisms of progressive evolution, which remains obscure for unitary (free-living) organisms. In the system of legume-rhizobia symbiosis, the hosting of N2-fixing bacteria within extracellular and intracellular compartments of nodules (infection threads, symbiosomes) acquired by plants during their coevolution with microbes induces in their populations, group selection is in favor of mutualistic traits (complete transfer of fixed nitrogen to hosts, differentiation of bacteria into the nonreproducible bacteroids). The colonization of infection threads by rhizobia increases the clonality in their populations that induce the interdeme selection for elevated nitrogenase activity. Its further increase may be due to colonization of symbiosomes, which induces the selection of kin in microbial populations in favor of irreversible bacteroid differentiation. The impact of these selection modes on bacteria resulted in the transition of anodular (rhizospheric, endophytic) plant-microbe associations based on the stimulation of root growth by auxins into nodular symbioses based on the effects of nitrogen fixation.

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  1. All-Russia Research Institute for Agricultural Microbiology, St. Petersburg, Russia

    N. A. Provorov & N. I. Vorobyov

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Original Russian Text © N.A. Provorov, N.I. Vorobyov, 2013, published in Uspekhi Sovremennoi Biologii, 2013, Vol. 133, No. 1, pp. 35–49.

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Provorov, N.A., Vorobyov, N.I. Macroevolution of symbiosis as self-organization of superspecies system controlled by natural selection. Biol Bull Rev 3, 274–285 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1134/S2079086413040063

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