Phylogenetic context determines the role of competition in adaptive radiation.

ABSTRACT: Understanding ecological mechanisms regulating the evolution of biodiversity is of much interest to ecologists and evolutionary biologists. Adaptive radiation constitutes an important evolutionary process that generates biodiversity. Competition has long been thought to influence adaptive radiation, but the directionality of its effect and associated mechanisms remain ambiguous. Here, we report a rigorous experimental test of the role of competition on adaptive radiation using the rapidly evolving bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 interacting with multiple bacterial species that differed in their phylogenetic distance to the diversifying bacterium. We showed that the inhibitive effect of competitors on the adaptive radiation of P. fluorescens decreased as their phylogenetic distance

SUBMITTER: Tan J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4936025 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature