Temperature affects the repeatability of evolution in the microbial eukaryote Tetrahymena thermophila.

ABSTRACT: Evolutionary biologists have long sought to understand what factors affect the repeatability of adaptive outcomes. To better understand the role of temperature in determining the repeatability of adaptive trajectories, we evolved populations of different genotypes of the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila at low and high temperatures and followed changes in growth rate over 6,500 generations. As expected, growth rate increased with a decelerating rate for all populations; however, there were differences in the patterns of evolution at the two temperatures. The growth rates of the different genotypes tended to converge as evolution proceeded at both temperatures, but this convergence was quicker and more pronounced at the higher temperature. Additionally, over the first 4,000 generation

SUBMITTER: Tarkington J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8495795 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature