Experimental evolution gone wild

Authors

M. Scheinin
U. Riebesell
Tatiana A. Rynearson, University of Rhode IslandFollow
K. T. Lohbeck
S. Collins

Document Type

Article

Date of Original Version

2015

Department

Oceanography

Abstract

Because of their large population sizes and rapid cell division rates, marine microbes have, or can generate, ample variation to fuel evolution over a few weeks or months, and subsequently have the potential to evolve in response to global change. Here we measure evolution in the marine diatom Skeletonema marinoi evolved in a natural plankton community in CO₂-enriched mesocosms deployed in situ. Mesocosm enclosures are typically used to study how the species composition and biogeochemistry of marine communities respond to environmental shifts, but have not been used for experimental evolution to date. Using this approach, we detect a large evolutionary response to CO₂ enrichment in a focal marine diatom, where population growth rate increased by 1.3-fold in high CO₂-evolved lineages. This study opens an exciting new possibility of carrying out in situ evolution experiments to understand how marine microbial communities evolve in response to environmental change.

Citation/Publisher Attribution

Scheinin M, Riebesell U, Rynearson TA, Lohbeck KT, Collins S. 2015 Experimental evolution gone wild. J. R. Soc. Interface 12: 20150056. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2015.0056

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2015.0056

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.