title: Consumer co-evolution as an important component of the eco-evolutionary feedback.
abstract: Rapid evolution in ecologically relevant traits has recently been recognized to significantly alter the interaction between consumers and their resources, a key interaction in all ecological communities. While these eco-evolutionary dynamics have been shown to occur when prey populations are evolving, little is known about the role of predator evolution and co-evolution between predator and prey in this context. Here, we investigate the role of consumer co-evolution for eco-evolutionary feedback in bacteria-ciliate microcosm experiments by manipulating the initial trait variation in the predator populations. With co-evolved predators, prey evolve anti-predatory defences faster, trait values are more variable, and predator and prey population sizes are larger at the end of the experiment compared with the non-co-evolved predators. Most importantly, differences in predator traits results in a shift from evolution driving ecology, to ecology driving evolution. Thus we demonstrate that predator co-evolution has important effects on eco-evolutionary dynamics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Food and Environmental Sciences/Microbiology and Biotechnology, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 65, Helsinki 00014, Finland.
authors.forename: Teppo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hiltunen
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Community Dynamics Group, August Thienemann Strasse 2, 24306 Plön, Germany.
authors.forename: Lutz
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Becks
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D017753:Ecosystem; D005246:Feedback; D020387:Food Chain; D011156:Population Density; D011551:Pseudomonas fluorescens / Q000502:physiology*; D016808:Tetrahymena thermophila / Q000502:physiology*