How Obstacles Perturb Population Fronts and Alter Their Genetic Structure.

ABSTRACT: As populations spread into new territory, environmental heterogeneities can shape the population front and genetic composition. We focus here on the effects of an important building block of heterogeneous environments, isolated obstacles. With a combination of experiments, theory, and simulation, we show how isolated obstacles both create long-lived distortions of the front shape and amplify the effect of genetic drift. A system of bacteriophage T7 spreading on a spatially heterogeneous Escherichia coli lawn serves as an experimental model system to study population expansions. Using an inkjet printer, we create well-defined replicates of the lawn and quantitatively study the population expansion of phage T7. The transient perturbations of the population front found in the experiments are

SUBMITTER: Mobius W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4690605 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature