Invasion and maintenance of spore killers in populations of ascomycete fungi
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I. Martinossi-Allibert, C. Veller, S. L. Ament-Velásquez, A. A. Vogan, C. Rueffler and H. Johannesson,
bioRxiv,
2020.04.06.026989.
2020.
Meiotic drivers are selfish genetic elements that have the ability to become over-represented among the products of meiosis. This transmission advantage makes it possible for them to spread in a population even when they impose fitness costs on their host organisms. Whether a meiotic driver can invade a population, and subsequently reach fixation or coexist in a stable polymorphism, depends on the one hand on the biology of the host organism, including its life-cycle, mating system, and population structure, and on the other hand on the specific fitness effects of the driving allele on the host. Here, we present a population genetics model for spore killing, a type of drive specific to fungi. We show how ploidy level, rate of selfing, and efficiency of spore killing affect the invasion probability of a driving allele and the conditions for its stable coexistence with the non-driving allele. Our model can be adapted to different fungal life-cycles, and is applied here to two well-studied genera of filamentous ascomycetes known to harbor spore killing elements, Podospora and Neurospora. We discuss our results in the light of recent empirical findings for these two systems. More related to this: Recurrent invasion and extinction of a selfish gene Spore-killing meiotic drive factors in a natural population of the fungus Podospora anserina Maintenance management and eradication of established aquatic invaders
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