A new paper headed by former graduate student Dr. Trey Scott employs environmental data across continental scales to highlight how the incidence of symbioses might be shaped by environmental conditions. They find that Dictyostelium discoideum is more likely to exist in symbiosis with Paraburkholderia hayleyella when living in environments where rainfall is unpredictable, potentially suggesting an adaptive role for forming this relationship. This finding was reversed for the rarer sister species, Paraburkholderia bonniea.

Read the paper here!