Interactions between organisms

Abstract

The ultimate unit of ecology is the gene, as it is expressed through the individual, and this will interact in many ways with the gene complexes of all the surrounding individuals with which it comes into contact, both of its own species and of others. In the relationship of parasitism, the host and the parasite are involved in a gene war more complex than the electronic military war of jam and anti jam. Resistance and virulence genes select each other in the two different species. Such interaction has been examined in the potato, and its blight fungus, Phytophthora infestans, by Dr Shattock and others.