title: The Beagle in a bottle.
abstract: Why infer evolution when you can watch it happen in real time? This is the basic premise of using populations of fast-replicating microorganisms in test tubes to study evolution. The approach, known as experimental evolution, has provided a way of testing many of the key hypotheses that arose from the modern evolutionary synthesis. However, details of the unnatural histories of microorganisms in test tubes can be extrapolated only so far. Potential future directions for the approach include studying microbial evolution for its own sake under the most natural conditions possible in the test tube, and testing some qualitative theories of genome evolution.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK. angus.buckling@zoo.ox.ac.uk
authors.forename: Angus
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Buckling
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Craig Maclean
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Brockhurst
authors.forename: Nick
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Colegrave
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development / Q000821:virology; D018407:Bacterial Physiological Phenomena; D044822:Biodiversity; D005075:Biological Evolution; D012641:Selection, Genetic