Valverde, SergiElena, Santiago F.Solé Vicente, Ricard, 1962-2025-01-202025-01-202017Valverde S, Elena SF, Solé R. Spatially induced nestedness in a neutral model of phage-bacteria networks. Virus Evolution. 2017 Jul;3(2):vex021. DOI: 10.1093/ve/vex0212057-1577http://hdl.handle.net/10230/69182Ecological networks, both displaying mutualistic or antagonistic interactions, seem to share common structural traits: the presence of nestedness and modularity. A variety of model approaches and hypothesis have been formulated concerning the significance and implications of these properties. In phage-bacteria bipartite infection networks, nestedness seems to be the rule in many different contexts. Modeling the coevolution of a diverse virus–host ensemble is a difficult task, given the dimensionality and multi parametric nature of a standard continuous approximation. Here, we take a different approach, by using a neutral, toy model of host–phage interactions on a spatial lattice. Each individual is represented by a bit string (a digital genome) but all strings in each class (i.e. hosts or phages) share the same sets of parameters. A matching allele model of phage-virus recognition rule is enough to generate a complex, diverse ecosystem with heterogeneous patterns of interaction and nestedness, provided that interactions take place under a spatially constrained setting. It is found that nestedness seems to be an emergent property of the co-evolutionary dynamics. Our results indicate that the enhanced diversity resulting from localized interactions strongly promotes the presence of nested infection matrices.application/pdfeng© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.cominfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ve/vex021Nested networksCoevolutionVirus–host interactionsMatching allele dynamicsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess