Towards an Understanding of Symbiont Natural History Through Studies Of
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Towards an understanding of symbiont natural history through studies of crayfish and their annelid associates James Skelton Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biological Sciences Bryan L. Brown E. Fred Benfield Lisa K. Belden Robert P. Creed 27 February 2015 Blacksburg, VA Keywords: Symbiosis, Branchiobdellida, community ecology, parasite ecology, mutualism, Cambarus, transmission Copyright James Skelton, 2015 Towards an understanding of symbiont natural history through studies of crayfish and their annelid associates James Skelton Abstract Crayfish throughout North America, Europe, and Asia host assemblages of obligate ectosymbiotic annelid worms called branchiobdellidans. The work presented here is a detailed experimental and observational study of the ecological interactions between crayfish and their worms. In a comprehensive literature review, I show that branchiobdellidans have complex and context-dependent effects on their hosts, serving as both beneficial cleaners and tissue- consuming parasites. Using a field survey and laboratory experiments, I provide novel evidence for age-specific resistance as an adaptation to maximize life-long benefits of a mutualism. Specifically, I show that Cambarus crayfish display a consistent ontogenetic shift in resistance to the colonization of branchiobdellidans and this shift likely reflects underlying changes in the costs and benefits of symbiosis. I then show that this change in host resistance creates predictable patterns of symbiont diversity and composition throughout host ontogeny. Host resistance limits within-host symbiont communities to a few weakly interacting species, whereas relaxed resistance leads to more diverse symbiont communities that have strong interactions among symbiont taxa. Thus, host resistance has direct effects on within-host symbiont community structure by selectively filtering colonizing species, and indirect effects by moderating the strength of interactions among symbionts. Lastly, in a detailed study of the worm Cambarincola ingens, I depict a symbiont dispersal strategy that yields highly predictable transmission dynamics during pairwise host-host encounters and shows that variation in transmission dynamics can be explained by the fitness outcomes for dispersing symbionts. Field observations revealed that worm reproduction is contingent on host size and intraspecific competition for preferred microhabitats. Using a predictive model that assumes transmission of symbionts only when current conditions yield fitness below a minimum threshold, I was able to predict individual transmission events much more accurately than a comparable null model that assumed a fixed probability of transmission. My work provides empirical support for the emerging trend among researchers that advocates the adaptation of general ecological frameworks to understand symbiont population structure and diversity, but my work also emphasizes the value of detailed natural history studies to uncover system-specific ecological and co-evolutionary processes such as partner control mechanisms, symbiont microhabitat selections, and symbiont dispersal strategies. iii Dedication To my father Rodney G. Skelton for inspiring a life-long love of the natural world and an appreciation for the simple things that make life good. iv Acknowledgements I thank my advisor Bryan L. Brown for his guidance, encouragement, and relentless enthusiasm for science and life in general. Bryan is a role model for the kind of scientist, and the kind of person that I aspire to be. I also thank Robert P. Creed for his encyclopedic wisdom as a mentor and contagious giddiness as an ecologist. Conversations with Robert over the past several years have always left me better-informed, and with a refreshed zeal for doing ecology. I could not be more fortunate, thankful, and proud to be a part of this remarkable academic lineage. I thank my committee members Lisa K. Belden and E. Fred Benfield for their hard work, advice and encouragement. I am particularly indebted to Lisa for her tenacity and shrewd feedback which improved my work at every step of the way, and for Fred’s always kind encouragement. I thank my friend, mentor, and naturalist extraordinaire Mac Strand for the countless good stories, mostly good advice, and for showing a kid from the sticks how to be a scientist. I am grateful to the funding agencies that made this work possible; The National Science Foundation, The Virginia Tech Fralin Life Sciences Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Summer Research Fund, and the Society for Freshwater Science Boesel-Sanderson Fund. For comradery, conversation, commiseration, and collaboration, I thank Lukas Landler, Eric Sokol, Kevin Geyer, Brett Tornwall, Skylar Hopkins, and Michael Painter. I also thank the graduate students, post docs, and faculty of the Virginia Tech Stream Team for their advice and encouragement. v I thank my parents Rodney G. Skelton and Vicky Skelton, and my siblings Dathon Skelton, Sarah Macklem, and Laura Skelton Knickerbocker for their love and support over the years. Finally, I thank Michelle A. Jusino for always knowing just the right thing to say or do. You are my conspirer, my confidant, and my counterpart. vi Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. x List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. xi Attributions ................................................................................................................................... xii Chapter 1. Servants, scoundrels, and hitchhikers: Current understanding of the complex interactions between crayfish and their ectosymbiotic worms (Branchiobdellida) ........................ 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 2 Pairwise Interactions between Crayfish and Branchiobdellidans ............................................... 5 Spatiotemporal Variability in Branchiobdellidan Assemblages ................................................. 8 Host Specificity, Preference, and Regulation ............................................................................. 9 Branchiobdellidan Taxonomy and Phylogenetics .................................................................... 12 Utility of the Crayfish–Branchiobdellidan Symbiosis as a Model System............................... 13 Continuing and Future Work .................................................................................................... 16 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 19 Literature Cited ......................................................................................................................... 20 Figure Captions ......................................................................................................................... 32 Chapter 2. Ontogenetic shift in host tolerance controls initiation of a cleaning symbiosis .......... 37 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 38 Methods..................................................................................................................................... 41 Study site ............................................................................................................................... 41 Handling and aquarium setup ............................................................................................... 42 Grooming experiments.......................................................................................................... 43 Data analysis ......................................................................................................................... 45 Field survey ........................................................................................................................... 45 Results ....................................................................................................................................... 46 Grooming experiments.......................................................................................................... 46 Survey ................................................................................................................................... 48 Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 49 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................