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Coevolution Drives the Emergence of Complex Traits and Promotes Evolvability

The evolution of complex organismal traits is obvious as a historical fact, but the underlying causes—including the role of natural selection—are contested. Gould argued that a random walk from a necessarily simple beginning would produce the appearance of increasing complexity over time. Others con...

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Autores principales: Zaman, Luis, Meyer, Justin R., Devangam, Suhas, Bryson, David M., Lenski, Richard E., Ofria, Charles
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4267771/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25514332
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002023
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author Zaman, Luis
Meyer, Justin R.
Devangam, Suhas
Bryson, David M.
Lenski, Richard E.
Ofria, Charles
author_facet Zaman, Luis
Meyer, Justin R.
Devangam, Suhas
Bryson, David M.
Lenski, Richard E.
Ofria, Charles
author_sort Zaman, Luis
collection PubMed
description The evolution of complex organismal traits is obvious as a historical fact, but the underlying causes—including the role of natural selection—are contested. Gould argued that a random walk from a necessarily simple beginning would produce the appearance of increasing complexity over time. Others contend that selection, including coevolutionary arms races, can systematically push organisms toward more complex traits. Methodological challenges have largely precluded experimental tests of these hypotheses. Using the Avida platform for digital evolution, we show that coevolution of hosts and parasites greatly increases organismal complexity relative to that otherwise achieved. As parasites evolve to counter the rise of resistant hosts, parasite populations retain a genetic record of past coevolutionary states. As a consequence, hosts differentially escape by performing progressively more complex functions. We show that coevolution's unique feedback between host and parasite frequencies is a key process in the evolution of complexity. Strikingly, the hosts evolve genomes that are also more phenotypically evolvable, similar to the phenomenon of contingency loci observed in bacterial pathogens. Because coevolution is ubiquitous in nature, our results support a general model whereby antagonistic interactions and natural selection together favor both increased complexity and evolvability.
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spelling pubmed-42677712014-12-26 Coevolution Drives the Emergence of Complex Traits and Promotes Evolvability Zaman, Luis Meyer, Justin R. Devangam, Suhas Bryson, David M. Lenski, Richard E. Ofria, Charles PLoS Biol Research Article The evolution of complex organismal traits is obvious as a historical fact, but the underlying causes—including the role of natural selection—are contested. Gould argued that a random walk from a necessarily simple beginning would produce the appearance of increasing complexity over time. Others contend that selection, including coevolutionary arms races, can systematically push organisms toward more complex traits. Methodological challenges have largely precluded experimental tests of these hypotheses. Using the Avida platform for digital evolution, we show that coevolution of hosts and parasites greatly increases organismal complexity relative to that otherwise achieved. As parasites evolve to counter the rise of resistant hosts, parasite populations retain a genetic record of past coevolutionary states. As a consequence, hosts differentially escape by performing progressively more complex functions. We show that coevolution's unique feedback between host and parasite frequencies is a key process in the evolution of complexity. Strikingly, the hosts evolve genomes that are also more phenotypically evolvable, similar to the phenomenon of contingency loci observed in bacterial pathogens. Because coevolution is ubiquitous in nature, our results support a general model whereby antagonistic interactions and natural selection together favor both increased complexity and evolvability. Public Library of Science 2014-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4267771/ /pubmed/25514332 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002023 Text en © 2014 Zaman et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Zaman, Luis
Meyer, Justin R.
Devangam, Suhas
Bryson, David M.
Lenski, Richard E.
Ofria, Charles
Coevolution Drives the Emergence of Complex Traits and Promotes Evolvability
title Coevolution Drives the Emergence of Complex Traits and Promotes Evolvability
title_full Coevolution Drives the Emergence of Complex Traits and Promotes Evolvability
title_fullStr Coevolution Drives the Emergence of Complex Traits and Promotes Evolvability
title_full_unstemmed Coevolution Drives the Emergence of Complex Traits and Promotes Evolvability
title_short Coevolution Drives the Emergence of Complex Traits and Promotes Evolvability
title_sort coevolution drives the emergence of complex traits and promotes evolvability
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4267771/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25514332
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002023
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