Figure 4: Long-term survival and fecundity of E. faecalis-colonised hosts that survived pathogen infection . (A) Long-term host survival was measured. Survival curves for sympatric pairs of worms and E. faecalis are shown as Kaplan-Meier estimates. Worms were exposed to E. faecalis and food (green), then to S. aureus (purple), and long-term survival was monitored on food (orange). The dotted line indicates the time point at which fecundity was measured. (B) Number of eggs/Female across sympatric pairs of coevolved worms and E. faecalis . Bigger symbols represent mean ± S.E. and consists of six biological replicates and four technical replicates. Smaller symbols indicate the data distribution. Circles indicate sympatric pairs of coevolved E. faecalis and worms, squares indicate ancestral pairs of E. faecalis and worms. Letters indicate results of a GLMM, followed by a Tukey Post-hoc Test. The same letter indicates no significant difference.
Furthermore, we investigated the long-term consequences to hosts colonised by E. faecalis after 24h of pathogen infection. No significant differences were observed in the long-term survival post-infection of worm hosts colonised by their sympatric E. faecalis across treatments (Kaplan Meier Log Rank Test, FDR corrected, all comparisons p>0.05, Figure 4A). In addition, we did not find significant differences in fecundity among sympatric host-E. faecalis pairs (Mixed Effects Model, X2=3.9418, df=4, p=0.4278, Figure 4B).