Understanding Adaptation and Diversification: Insights from the Study of Microbial Experimental Evolution.
Explaining the generation and maintenance of biodiversity is a central aim of evolutionary biology. This requires the integration of studies focused on explaining within-population diversity through to the organization of biodiversity at the ecosystem level. The combination of such comparative studies in nature with those employing experimental evolution in the laboratory is also valuable: the former helps build and test predictions for what processes might be driving patterns of biodiversity, while the latter can confirm whether such processes are capable of doing so in the absence of other biotic and abiotic factors. The recent increase in experimental evolution studies focusing on microbial populations has offered a number of key insights into the evolutionary mechanisms of adaptation and diversification relating to microbial organisms specifically, as well as into those mechanisms that are likely to generalize to non-microbial species. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
BioSciences, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Tremough, Cornwall, TR10 9EZ, UK. B.L.Koskella@Exeter.ac.uk.
Britt
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Koskella