ReviewEcology letters2025
Deadly Decomposers: Distinguishing Life History Strategies on the Parasitism-Saprotrophy Spectrum.
Review in Ecology letters, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Volatile cues from pathogenic, mutualistic and saprotrophic fungi cause specific, fungus-dependent responses in poplar.Tree physiology · 2026Article
- Environmental disturbances of trophic interactions and their impacts on a multihost sapronotic pathogen.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2026Article
- Phytomycobiomes and Ecosystem Services: Mechanisms, Evidence and Routes to Application.Journal of fungi (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Deadly Decomposers: Distinguishing Life History Strategies on the Parasitism-Saprotrophy Spectrum.Ecology letters · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ability to parasitize living hosts as well as decompose dead organic matter is both common and widespread across prokaryotic and eukaryotic taxa. These parasitic decomposers have long been considered merely accidental or facultative parasites. However, this is often untrue: in many cases, parasitism is integral to the ecology and evolution of these organisms. Combining life cycle information from the literature with a generalised eco-evolutionary model, we define four distinct life history strategies followed by parasitic decomposers. Each strategy has a unique fitness expression, life cycle, ecological context, and set of evolutionary constraints. Correctly classifying parasitic decomposers is essential for understanding their ecology and epidemiology and directly impacts efforts to manage important medical and agricultural pathogens.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.