ABSTRACT
Stefan Olsson, Paola Bonfante, and Teresa E. Pawlowska
39.1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The propensity of fungi to synthesize compounds active against bacteria (Broadbent 1966) and the predilection of bacteria to produce antifungals (Kerr 1999) gave rise to a paradigm that interactions between representatives of these two groups of organisms are of an antagonistic nature. While, indeed, evidence for fungal-bacterial antagonisms is abundant (Espuny Tomas et al. 1982; Leveau and Preston 2008; Pliego et al. 2011; Susi et al. 2011; Pawlowska et al. 2012; Palaniyandi et al. 2013), the recent accumulation of newly discovered associations in which fungi cooperate with bacteria (Kobayashi
and Crouch 2009; Frey-Klett et al. 2011) indicates that such reciprocally bene›cial interactions are more common than previously thought. As functional and mechanistic aspects of many of these interdomain relationships were reviewed in detail elsewhere (Grube and Berg 2009; Kobayashi and Crouch 2009; Peleg et al. 2010; Frey-Klett et al. 2011; Martin and Schwab 2012; Scherlach et al. 2013), our discussion will focus on factors that contribute to their stability over ecological and evolutionary times. We hope that, by directing attention to this important, but currently neglected, aspect of fungal-bacterial interactions, we will inspire new directions of research on the biology of these organisms.
