Poster

         Ecology

Investigating the result of fungal pathogen competition on host-outcomes in complex disease ecological networks

Presenting Author
MINH TRAN
Description
Pests and pathogen threaten crop yield worldwide, leading to products and financial losses. While pesticides may mitigate yield loss, farmers and consumers are wary due to potential health hazards and negative environmental impact. Biological controls are an alternative to common pesticides using organisms to control negative plant-biotic interactions. The fungi Beauveria bassiana is common insect biological control agent, popularized due to insect host-generality. In addition, B. bassiana is observed to promote growth in their vector-plant. In contrast, Botrytis cinerea, another host-generalist fungi, is a plant-pathogen capable of infecting various crops and wild plants. While evidence supports B. bassiana inhibition of B. cinerea grown in planta, impacts of this relationship on entomopathogenic outcomes have not been assessed. Our works seeks to (1) identify potential changes of B. bassiana entomopathogenicity due to competition with B. cinerea in-planta, and (2) determine if fungal growth rate explains observed pathogenicity differences.