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Ecological and Evolutionary Processes Shaping Viral Genetic Diversity.

  • Retel C Department of Fish Ecology and Evolution, Center for Ecology, Evolution and Biogeochemistry, EAWAG, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, 6047 Kastanienbaum, Switzerland. cas.retel@eawag.ch.
  • Märkle H Section of Population Genetics, TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, 85354 Freising, Germany. hanna.maerkle@tum.de.
  • Becks L Limnological Institute University Konstanz, Aquatic Ecology and Evolution, 78464 Konstanz, Germany. lutz.becks@uni-konstanz.de.
  • Feulner PGD Department of Fish Ecology and Evolution, Center for Ecology, Evolution and Biogeochemistry, EAWAG, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, 6047 Kastanienbaum, Switzerland. philine.feulner@eawag.ch.
  • 2019-03-08
Published in:
  • Viruses. - 2019
eco-evolutionary feedback
genetic diversity
host–virus coevolution
viral population genetics
Ecosystem
Evolution, Molecular
Genetic Variation
Genomics
Host Microbial Interactions
Models, Biological
Viruses
English The contemporary genomic diversity of viruses is a result of the continuous and dynamic interaction of past ecological and evolutionary processes. Thus, genome sequences of viruses can be a valuable source of information about these processes. In this review, we first describe the relevant processes shaping viral genomic variation, with a focus on the role of host⁻virus coevolution and its potential to give rise to eco-evolutionary feedback loops. We further give a brief overview of available methodology designed to extract information about these processes from genomic data. Short generation times and small genomes make viruses ideal model systems to study the joint effect of complex coevolutionary and eco-evolutionary interactions on genetic evolution. This complexity, together with the diverse array of lifetime and reproductive strategies in viruses ask for extensions of existing inference methods, for example by integrating multiple information sources. Such integration can broaden the applicability of genetic inference methods and thus further improve our understanding of the role viruses play in biological communities.
Language
  • English
Open access status
gold
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Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/10253
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