Experiments with monarch butterfly caterpillars and the milkweed plants on which they feed have shown for the first time that interactions across four biological kingdoms can influence disease transmission.

Monarchs are susceptible to various parasites that can weaken them and shorten their lifespan. It's been known for some time that toxins produced by milkweed plants can protect monarchs from those parasites.

In a paper published online Oct. 13, 2015 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers from the University of Michigan and Emory University show that root fungi that form a symbiotic relationship with milkweed plants also play a role in disease transmission.

U-M ecologist Mark Hunter and his colleagues report that representatives from four of the traditional biological kingdoms – plants, animals, fungi and protozoan parasites – are involved. In traditional biological taxonomy schemes, protozoans were included in a kingdom called Protista.

The symbiotic fungi in question are called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. In return for sugars, these fungi provide plants with nutrients and water.

"All four of these kingdoms are connected in the ecology of this disease," said Hunter, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "Mycorrhizal fungi associated with the roots of milkweed plants change the medicinal chemistry of milkweed leaves and therefore the transmission of the monarch parasites."

Because more than 90 percent of land plants associate with mycorrhizal fungi, the monarch findings likely have important implications for the study of community ecology in general and disease ecology in particular, according to the authors.

And since humans obtain about half of their new pharmaceuticals from plants, mycorrhizal fungi likely affect not only the medicinal quality of plants but the potential for new drug discoveries, as well, Hunter said.

The first author of the paper is Leiling Tao, a former doctoral student in Hunter's lab who is now a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Emory biologist Jaap de Roode. The other U-M author is Camden Gowler, a doctoral student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

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The paper is receiving a great deal of media attention, including a Science news feature.