Spatial structure is thought to be an important factor influencing the emergence and maintenance of genetic diversity. Previous studies have demonstrated that environmental heterogeneity, provided by spatial structure, leads to adaptive radiation of populations. In the present study, we investigate not only the impact of environmental heterogeneity on adaptive radiation, but also of population fragmentation and niche construction. Replicate populations founded by a single genotype of Escherichia coli were allowed to evolve for 900 generations by serial transfer in either a homogeneous environment, or a spatially structured environment that was either kept intact or destroyed with each daily transfer. Only populations evolving in the structured environment with intact population structure diversified: clones are significantly divergent in sugar catabolism, and show frequency-dependent fitness interactions indicative of stable coexistence. These findings demonstrate an important role for population fragmentation, a consequence of population structure in spatially structured environments, on the diversification of populations.
BackgroundSmall populations are thought to be adaptively handicapped, not only because they suffer more from deleterious mutations but also because they have limited access to new beneficial mutations, particularly those conferring large benefits.Methodology/Principal FindingsHere, we test this widely held conjecture using both simulations and experiments with small and large bacterial populations evolving in either a simple or a complex nutrient environment. Consistent with expectations, we find that small populations are adaptively constrained in the simple environment; however, in the complex environment small populations not only follow more heterogeneous adaptive trajectories, but can also attain higher fitness than the large populations. Large populations are constrained to near deterministic fixation of rare large-benefit mutations. While such determinism speeds adaptation on the smooth adaptive landscape represented by the simple environment, it can limit the ability of large populations from effectively exploring the underlying topography of rugged adaptive landscapes characterized by complex environments.ConclusionsOur results show that adaptive constraints often faced by small populations can be circumvented during evolution on rugged adaptive landscapes.
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been proposed as a promising new class of antimicrobials despite warnings that therapeutic use could drive the evolution of pathogens resistant to our own immunity peptides. Using experimental evolution, we demonstrate that Staphylococcus aureus rapidly evolved resistance to pexiganan, a drug-candidate for diabetic leg ulcer infections. Evolved resistance was costly in terms of impaired growth rate, but costs-of-resistance were completely ameliorated by compensatory adaptation. Crucially, we show that, in some populations, experimentally evolved resistance to pexiganan provided S. aureus with crossresistance to human-neutrophil-defensin-1, a key component of the innate immune response to infection. This unintended consequence of therapeutic use could drastically undermine our innate immune system's ability to control and clear microbial infections. Our results therefore highlight grave potential risks of AMP therapies, with implications for their development.
Populations in spatially structured environments may be divided into a number of (semi-) isolated subpopulations due to limited offspring dispersal. Limited dispersal and, as a consequence, local competition could slow down the invasion of fitter mutants, allowing the short-term coexistence of ancestral genotypes and mutants. We determined the rate of invasion of beneficial mutants of Escherichia coli, dispersed to different degrees in a spatially structured environment during 40 generations, experimentally and theoretically. Simulations as well as experimental data show a decrease in the rate of invasion with increasingly constrained dispersal. When a beneficial mutant invades from a single spot, competition with the ancestral genotype takes place only along the edges of the growing colony patch. As the colony grows, the fitness of the mutant will decrease due to a decrease in the mutant's fraction that effectively competes with the surrounding ancestor. Despite its inherently higher competitive ability, increased intragenotype competition prevents the beneficial mutant from rapidly taking over, causing short-term coexistence of superior and inferior genotypes.
Abstract. The role of ecological processes in the evolution of social traits is increasingly recognized. Here, we explore, using a general theoretical model and experiments with bacteria, the joint effects of disturbance frequency and resource supply on the evolution of cooperative biofilm formation. Our results demonstrate that cooperation tends to peak at intermediate frequencies of disturbance but that the peak shifts toward progressively higher frequencies of disturbance as resource supply increases. This appears to arise due to increased growth rates at higher levels of resource supply, which allows cooperators to more rapidly exceed the density threshold above which cooperation is beneficial following catastrophic disturbance. These findings demonstrate for the first time the importance of interactions between ecological processes in the evolution of public-goods cooperation and suggest that cooperation can be favored by selection across a wide range of ecological conditions.
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