Adaptive differentiation and rapid evolution of a soil bacterium along a climate gradient.

ABSTRACT: Microbial community responses to environmental change are largely associated with ecological processes; however, the potential for microbes to rapidly evolve and adapt remains relatively unexplored in natural environments. To assess how ecological and evolutionary processes simultaneously alter the genetic diversity of a microbiome, we conducted two concurrent experiments in the leaf litter layer of soil over 18 mo across a climate gradient in Southern California. In the first experiment, we reciprocally transplanted microbial communities from five sites to test whether ecological shifts in ecotypes of the abundant bacterium, Curtobacterium, corresponded to past adaptive differentiation. In the transplanted communities, ecotypes converged toward that of the native communities growin

SUBMITTER: Chase AB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8106337 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature