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Updated: Aug 9, 2025

Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli
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Evolutionary coexistence in a fluctuating environment by specialization on resource level.

Meike T Wortel1

  • 1Molecular Biology and Microbial Food Safety, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

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|February 17, 2023
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Evolution can create microbial diversity in fluctuating environments. Stable coexistence requires specific trade-offs, but this mechanism is supported by evidence in microbial communities.

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adaptive dynamicscoexistencefluctuating environmentgrowth trade-offsmicrobial evolution

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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Microbiology

Background:

  • Microbial diversity is crucial for ecosystem stability and function.
  • Fluctuating nutrient levels may drive diversity through specialist species.
  • Rapid evolution in microbial populations can impact community stability.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of evolution in microbial diversity within fluctuating environments.
  • To determine if evolutionary branching enhances or destabilizes species coexistence.
  • To identify the conditions necessary for evolutionarily stable coexistence.

Main Methods:

  • Derived an analytical expression for invasion fitness in fluctuating environments.
  • Applied adaptive dynamics techniques to model evolutionary stability.
  • Analyzed available data for Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae on glucose.

Main Results:

  • Evolutionarily stable coexistence necessitates a specific trade-off between low and high nutrient growth.
  • No supporting evidence for this trade-off was found in available data for E. coli and S. cerevisiae.
  • Evidence for evolutionarily stable coexistence was observed, despite scarce data.

Conclusions:

  • Specialization on resource levels is a likely driver of microbial diversity in fluctuating environments.
  • Further research is needed to confirm evolutionary trade-offs in various microbial species and conditions.
  • The study predicts specialization is a key mechanism for microbial diversity in natural, fluctuating settings.