Describing a parasitic organism, especially a rust fungus, that completes its entire life cycle on a single host plant species.
Combines auto- (self) + Greek oikos (house). A specialized botanical/mycological term from late 19th-century plant pathology.
Autoecic rust fungi are so specialized that they'll only infect one plant species—imagine a parasite so committed to one host that it can't even survive on closely related plants, representing an evolutionary dead-end that's actually quite common in nature.
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