Browsing by master's degree program "Master's Programme in Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology"

Coevolution, the reciprocal evolution of species, is a significant evolutionary phenomenon, and it has been known since the days of Darwin. These days it can be studied using experimental evolution in laboratory-regulated environments where the “fossil populations” which are preserved during the experiments can be compared with contemporary populations and with each other. Bacteria and unicellular eukaryotic predators are suitable for the research of predator-prey interactions including of antagonistic coevolution. This is due to their short generation time and thus the fast evolution. In my Master’s thesis, I examined the changes caused by antagonistic coevolution in a log-term predator selection experiment in the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens and the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila. I examined the ecological stability between the populations using time-shift experiments. I also examined growth curve parameters for the bacterial population as well as its metabolic activity, diversity through colony morphology, and the ability of the non-evolved and coevolved ciliate to consume bacteria. Part of the experiments were performed using as control a bacterial population which had evolved without predator. Based on previous research, I hypothesized that coevolution would increase the stability of the community and the diversity of the bacterial populations. I expected the carrying capacity, maximum growth rate, and metabolic activity, in turn, to decrease over time. I observed that coevolution stabilized the dynamics, as was expected, and this was associated with increased diversity in the prey population. As the latter has been observed to be the reason for increased stability, the results here support earlier observations. The carrying capacity and area under the growth curve decreased as expected, but the maximum growth rate did not change over time. There was also no difference in the growth of the ciliates, regardless of evolutionary history, on the bacteria from different time points. Because of uncertainties arising from the experimental design, some of the results cannot be confirmed to have been caused by coevolution. The results increase the knowledge regarding the effects (co)evolutionary history can have on ecology and the phenotypic traits of populations. The differences and similarities in the results compared to earlier studies indicate that the effects of coevolution change in time and differ between short-term and long-term settings. Further studies are required to provide more unequivocal support for the presence of coevolution and elucidate its precise phenotypic and molecular drivers.