Temporal resource variation promotes growth equalization through alternative plasticity strategies
Evolutionary theory predicts that fluctuating environments favor adaptations that maximize geometric-mean fitness by reducing variance in performance across conditions. We tested this prediction experimentally by evolving the lactic acid bacterium Lactococcus cremoris on the sugars fructose and galactose in density-controlled chemostats under four resource regimes: constant supply of fructose,…
Research reveals that fluctuating resource availability promotes equal growth among species through various adaptation strategies. Evolutionary theory suggests that environmental fluctuations favor adaptations that minimize performance variance across conditions. To test this hypothesis, scientists evolved the lactic acid bacterium Lactococcus cremoris under different sugar supply regimes - constant fructose, constant galactose, a constant mixture of both sugars, or an alternating supply.
In the absence of temporal variation, the bacterium diverged into fructose and galactose specialists due to resource trade-offs. However, adaptation to temporal resource variation led to equalized growth on both sugars. The bacterium increased growth on galactose and decreased growth on fructose. Notably, performance equalization emerged through different resource-transition strategies in replicate populations.
Strains displayed variations in resource affinity and growth recovery on fructose and galactose. The study demonstrates that temporal resource variation selects for variance-minimizing adaptations while employing multiple resource transition strategies. This illustrates how distinct modes of metabolic plasticity can result in similar fitness outcomes.
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