No abstract

Laboratory experiments have shown that the fitness of microorganisms can depend on cooperation between cells. Although this insight has revolutionized our understanding of microbial life, results from artificial microcosms have not been validated in complex natural populations. We investigated the sociality of essential virulence factors (crystal toxins) in the pathogenBacillus thuringiensisusing diamondback moth larvae (Plutella xylostella) as hosts. We show that toxin production is cooperative, and in a manipulative field experiment, we observed persistent high relatedness and frequency- and density-dependent selection, which favor stable cooperation. Conditions favoring social virulence can therefore persist in the face of natural population processes, and social interactions (rapid cheat invasion) may account for the rarity of natural disease outbreaks caused byB. thuringiensis.

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and its insecticidal toxins are widely exploited in microbial biopesticides and genetically modified crops. Its population biology is, however, poorly understood. Important issues for the safe, sustainable exploitation of Bt include understanding how selection maintains expression of insecticidal toxins in nature, whether entomopathogenic Bt is ecologically distinct from related human pathogens in the Bacillus cereus group, and how the use of microbial pesticides alters natural bacterial populations. We addressed these questions with a MLST scheme applied to a field experiment in which we excluded/added insect hosts and microbial pesticides in a factorial design. The presence of insects increased the density of Bt/B. cereus in the soil and the proportion of strains expressing insecticidal toxins. We found a near-epidemic population structure dominated by a single entomopathogenic genotype (ST8) in sprayed and unsprayed enclosures. Biopesticidal ST8 proliferated in hosts after spraying but was also found naturally associated with leaves more than any other genotype. In an independent experiment several ST8 isolates proved better than a range of non-pathogenic STs at endophytic and epiphytic colonization of seedlings from soil. This is the first experimental demonstration of Bt behaving as a specialized insect pathogen in the field. These data provide a basis for understanding both Bt ecology and the influence of anthropogenic factors on Bt populations. This natural population of Bt showed habitat associations and a population structure that differed markedly from previous MLST studies of less ecologically coherent B. cereus sample collections. The host-specific adaptations of ST8, its close association with its toxin plasmid and its high prevalence within its clade are analogous to the biology of Bacillus anthracis. This prevalence also suggests that selection for resistance to the insecticidal toxins of ST8 will have been stronger than for other toxin classes.

Genes which provide resistance to novel challenges such as pesticides, toxins or pathogens often impose fitness costs on individuals with a resistant phenotype. Studies of resistance to Bacillus thuringiensis and its insecticidal Cry toxins indicate that fitness costs may be variable and cryptic. Using two field populations (Karak and Serd4) of the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella, we tested the hypothesis that the costs associated with resistance to the B. thuringiensis toxin Cry1Ac would be evident when insects were grown under poor environmental conditions, namely limited or poor quality resources. On a poor quality resource, a cultivar of Brassica oleracea var. capitata with varietal resistance to P. xylostella, only one resistant population, Karak, showed reduced fitness. Conversely, when we limited a high quality resource, Brassica pekinensis, by imposing larval competition, only resistant Serd4 insects had reduced survival at high larval densities. Furthermore, Cry1Ac resistance in Serd4 insects declined when reared at high larval densities while resistance at low densities fluctuated but did not decline significantly. These results confirm the hypothesis that resistance costs can appear under stressful conditions and demonstrate that the fitness cost of resistance to Bacillus thuringiensis can depend on the particular interaction between genes and the environment.