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The effect of dilution on eco‐evolutionary dynamics of experimental microbial communities

Changing environmental conditions can infer structural modifications of predator‐prey communities. New conditions often increase mortality which reduces population sizes. Following this, predation pressure may decrease until populations are dense again. Dilution may thus have substantial impact not...

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Autores principales: Scheuerl, Thomas, Kaitala, Veijo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8495831/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34646480
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8065
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author Scheuerl, Thomas
Kaitala, Veijo
author_facet Scheuerl, Thomas
Kaitala, Veijo
author_sort Scheuerl, Thomas
collection PubMed
description Changing environmental conditions can infer structural modifications of predator‐prey communities. New conditions often increase mortality which reduces population sizes. Following this, predation pressure may decrease until populations are dense again. Dilution may thus have substantial impact not only on ecological but also on evolutionary dynamics because it amends population densities. Experimental studies, in which microbial populations are maintained by a repeated dilution into fresh conditions after a certain period, are extensively used approaches allowing us to obtain mechanistic insights into fundamental processes. By design, dilution, which depends on transfer volume (modifying mortality) and transfer interval (determining the time of interaction), is an inherent feature of these experiments, but often receives little attention. We further explore previously published data from a live predator‐prey (bacteria and ciliates) system which investigated eco‐evolutionary principles and apply a mathematical model to predict how various transfer volumes and transfer intervals would affect such an experiment. We find not only the ecological dynamics to be modified by both factors but also the evolutionary rates to be affected. Our work predicts that the evolution of the anti‐predator defense in the bacteria, and the evolution of the predation efficiency in the ciliates, both slow down with lower transfer volume, but speed up with longer transfer intervals. Our results provide testable hypotheses for future studies of predator‐prey systems, and we hope this work will help improve our understanding of how ecological and evolutionary processes together shape composition of microbial communities.
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spelling pubmed-84958312021-10-12 The effect of dilution on eco‐evolutionary dynamics of experimental microbial communities Scheuerl, Thomas Kaitala, Veijo Ecol Evol Original Research Changing environmental conditions can infer structural modifications of predator‐prey communities. New conditions often increase mortality which reduces population sizes. Following this, predation pressure may decrease until populations are dense again. Dilution may thus have substantial impact not only on ecological but also on evolutionary dynamics because it amends population densities. Experimental studies, in which microbial populations are maintained by a repeated dilution into fresh conditions after a certain period, are extensively used approaches allowing us to obtain mechanistic insights into fundamental processes. By design, dilution, which depends on transfer volume (modifying mortality) and transfer interval (determining the time of interaction), is an inherent feature of these experiments, but often receives little attention. We further explore previously published data from a live predator‐prey (bacteria and ciliates) system which investigated eco‐evolutionary principles and apply a mathematical model to predict how various transfer volumes and transfer intervals would affect such an experiment. We find not only the ecological dynamics to be modified by both factors but also the evolutionary rates to be affected. Our work predicts that the evolution of the anti‐predator defense in the bacteria, and the evolution of the predation efficiency in the ciliates, both slow down with lower transfer volume, but speed up with longer transfer intervals. Our results provide testable hypotheses for future studies of predator‐prey systems, and we hope this work will help improve our understanding of how ecological and evolutionary processes together shape composition of microbial communities. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8495831/ /pubmed/34646480 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8065 Text en © 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Scheuerl, Thomas
Kaitala, Veijo
The effect of dilution on eco‐evolutionary dynamics of experimental microbial communities
title The effect of dilution on eco‐evolutionary dynamics of experimental microbial communities
title_full The effect of dilution on eco‐evolutionary dynamics of experimental microbial communities
title_fullStr The effect of dilution on eco‐evolutionary dynamics of experimental microbial communities
title_full_unstemmed The effect of dilution on eco‐evolutionary dynamics of experimental microbial communities
title_short The effect of dilution on eco‐evolutionary dynamics of experimental microbial communities
title_sort effect of dilution on eco‐evolutionary dynamics of experimental microbial communities
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8495831/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34646480
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8065
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