Virus coinfection in plants determined by ecological responses to environmental heterogeneity

In 1,931 plants across 94 species, over 50% were coinfected by 2–8 viruses, and most virus–virus coinfections were random rather than non-random.

• Why it matters: Plant virus coinfection is common, but it is unclear which ecological factors shape non-random virus interactions beyond population-level patterns.
• What they did: Using Markov and conditional random fields on virus associations from a multi-host, multi-virus system spanning 18 generalist virus species, the study tested intrinsic and environmental drivers of coinfection.
• The result: Random field models indicated shared responses to environmental heterogeneity drive coinfection and strongly suggest horizontal transmission mode as a causal agent, with between-host processes playing the major role.

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