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Predator vs prey lee martin3/29/2024 ![]() ![]() Here ask how the coevolution of trophic antagonism between a microbial predator and prey species affects a larger web of interacting microbial species. However, key questions about the consequences of localized coevolution for ecosystem function and composition remain. These studies demonstrate that localized coevolution between species pairs can influence microbial community function and composition. For example, coevolution between a marine flavobacterium species and two viruses altered the suite of carbon compounds used by the bacterium, while rapid resistance evolution in a marine cyanobacterial host has been shown to reduce the effect of viral lysis on dissolved nutrient recycling community stoichiometry. ![]() Phenotypic traits shaped through coevolution may also have pleiotropic consequences for ecological functions unrelated to predator/parasite sensitivity. Intraspecific diversity in a focal species has been shown to alter microbial community composition to a comparable extent to removing a predator or the focal species itself. īecause antagonistic coevolution can drive reciprocal phenotypic diversification of prey/hosts and predators/parasites, this may be a critical process generating intraspecific diversity and driving community composition. For example, phagotrophic protistan grazers have a critical role in controlling the standing stock of bacterial populations and are a significant link in the transfer of dissolved organic carbon from heterotrophic bacteria to higher trophic levels in many microbial ecosystems. Coevolution between microbial grazers and prey promotes phenotypic and genotypic diversity in marine bacterial populations by selecting for altered cell size, shape, lifestyle, or physiochemical properties of the cell surface, which can increase bacterial survival. Īntagonistic coevolution between microbial predators and prey likely affects many ecological and evolutionary processes, including population dynamics, the maintenance of local genetic diversity, and the enrichment of biodiversity across spatially heterogeneous landscapes. Many microbial phenotypes (e.g., antimicrobial production or parasite resistance) have been shaped by antagonistic coevolution whereby hosts/prey evolve resistance to their parasites/predators. ![]() Much about coevolution has been learned from studying microbes whose large population sizes, fast generation times, and relatively high mutation rates allow scientists to observe evolution in real-time as it unfolds. The coevolutionary process is a major force producing phenotypic and genetic diversity both at the microevolutionary scale and across the wider tree of life. Similar content being viewed by othersĬoevolution is the reciprocal selection imposed by pairwise or multi-way ecological interactions between species. We propose that these altered expression patterns may signal forthcoming evolutionary and ecological change. Our findings show that the disruption of localized coevolution between species pairs can reverberate through community-wide transcriptional networks even while community composition remains largely unchanged. This ecosystem-level response was mirrored by community-wide transcriptional shifts that resulted in the differential regulation of nutrient acquisition and surface colonization pathways across multiple bacterial species. However, community metabolic potential (represented by per-cell ATP concentration) was significantly higher in the presence of both the coevolved focal predator and prey. Altering the coevolutionary history of the focal prey species had little effect on community structure or carrying capacity in the presence or absence of the coevolved predator. We conducted an experiment with a synthetic 30-species bacterial community where we experimentally manipulated the coevolutionary history of a ciliate predator and one bacterial prey species from the community. A fundamental challenge in evolutionary ecology is to untangle how coevolution in small species groups affects and is affected by biotic interactions in diverse communities. ![]() Closely interacting microbial species pairs (e.g., predator and prey) can become coadapted via reciprocal natural selection. ![]()
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