Reply to Kiers et al.: Economic and Biological Clarity in the Theory of Mutualism
Citation
Weyl, E. Glen, Megan E. Frederickson, Douglas W. Yu, and Naomi E. Pierce. 2011. Reply to Kiers et al.: Economic and Biological Clarity in the Theory of Mutualism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 3: E8.Abstract
Kiers et al. (1) make three main points. First, they noted that many mutualisms involve multiple symbionts interacting with a single host. We agree, and we explained that partner fidelity feedback (PFF) can function because plants generally “limit, withdraw, or even abscise investment in shoots, flowers, and roots (or subsets of any of these) after physical damage or deficits of… resources…” (2). This “modularity” of plant hosts (3) separates the effects of different symbionts and allows the host to react to individual symbionts. Modularity is easily incorporated into our model, because (with no change in our results) principal-agent theory allows the assumption of one agent per host to be replaced …Other Sources
http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/pierce/publications/pdfs/2011_Weyl_et_al_reply.pdfhttp://www.researchgate.net/profile/Douglas_Yu/publication/235613402_Reply_to_Kiers_et_al._Economic_and_biological_clarity_in_the_theory_of_mutualism/links/00b7d513f5f08788be000000
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