Goddard, Matthew R. and Bradford, Mark A. (2003) The adaptive response of a natural microbial population to carbon- and nitrogen-limitation. Ecology Letters, 6 (7). pp. 594-598. ISSN 1461-023X
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18446 Goddard_et_al-2003-Ecology_Letters.pdf - Whole Document Restricted to Repository staff only 151kB |
Item Type: | Article |
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Item Status: | Live Archive |
Abstract
The majority of experiments investigating the population and community level consequences of altered carbon and nitrogen availability implicitly assume a fixed range of ability to obtain and process these nutrients. This may be fair when considering long-lived organisms, however, short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) will pass through many more generations in the same time period providing scope for evolutionary adaptation. Using isolates of a natural fungal population we demonstrate significant adaptation to carbon-limitation, but not to nitrogen-limitation, over a modest number of generations. However, adaptation comes at a cost: those adapted to carbon-limitation are significantly worse competitors for limited nitrogen when compared with their ancestors. The potential for adaptation (and correlated cost) we demonstrate with our model system highlights the need to consider evolutionary adaptation when interpreting responses of populations, communities and ecosystems to treatments that manipulate, either directly or indirectly, resource availability.
Keywords: | adaptation, carbon, evolution, microbial community, nitrogen, nutrient availability, Fungi |
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Subjects: | C Biological Sciences > C180 Ecology |
Divisions: | College of Science > School of Life Sciences |
Related URLs: | |
ID Code: | 18446 |
Deposited On: | 20 Aug 2015 15:31 |
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