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Updated: Jun 30, 2025
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Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli
Published on: August 18, 2023
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Emergence and maintenance of stable coexistence during a long-term multicellular evolution experiment
Rozenn M Pineau1,2, Eric Libby3,4, David Demory5
1School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Nature Ecology & Evolution
|March 15, 2024
Summary
Early multicellular life evolved niche partitioning and adaptive divergence in snowflake yeast. This study shows how new biological individuality drives diversification and expands ecological niches.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary biology
- Ecology
- Microbiology
Background:
- Multicellular life's evolution profoundly impacted Earth's ecosystems.
- Early evolutionary steps towards multicellularity and their eco-evolutionary effects are poorly understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how early multicellularity evolution influences eco-evolutionary dynamics.
- To observe niche partitioning and adaptive divergence from a single multicellular ancestor.
Main Methods:
- Long-term experimental evolution of snowflake yeast over 715 daily transfers.
- Selection for rapid growth followed by selection for larger group size.
- Ecological modeling and experimentation to determine coexistence mechanisms.
Main Results:
- Two specialized lineages (small and large cluster-formers) evolved from a single ancestor.
- These lineages coexisted for ~4,300 generations, specializing on a growth rate-survival trade-off.
- Coexistence was maintained by a trade-off between organismal size and dissolved oxygen competition.
Conclusions:
- The evolution of biological individuality can rapidly drive adaptive diversification.
- Nascent multicellular niches can expand, mirroring major evolutionary transitions.
- Early multicellularity significantly shapes eco-evolutionary dynamics.
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