Intraspecific diversity loss in a predator species alters prey community structure and ecosystem functions.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Raffard A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7987174 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Closely interacting microbial species pairs (e.g., predator and prey) can become coadapted via reciprocal natural selection. A fundamental challenge in evolutionary ecology is to untangle how coevolution in small species groups affects and is affected by biotic interactions in diverse communities. We conducted an experiment with a synthetic 30-species bacterial community where we experimentally manipulated the coevolutionary history of a ciliate predator and one bacterial prey species from the community. Altering the coevolutionary history of the focal prey species had little effect on community structure or carrying capacity in the presence or absence of the coevolved predator. However, community metabolic potential (represented by per-cell ATP concentration) was significantly higher in the presence of both the coevolved focal predator and prey. This ecosystem-level response was mirrored by community-wide transcriptional shifts that resulted in the differential regulation of nutrient acquisition and surface colonization pathways across multiple bacterial species. Our findings show that the disruption of localized coevolution between species pairs can reverberate through community-wide transcriptional networks even while community composition remains largely unchanged. We propose that these altered expression patterns may signal forthcoming evolutionary and ecological change.
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Project description:Cannibalism among predators is a key intraspecific interaction affecting their density and foraging behavior, eventually modifying the strength of predation on heterospecific prey. Interestingly, previous studies showed that cannibalism among predators can increase or reduce predation on heterospecific prey; however, we know less about the factors that lead to these outcomes. Using a simple pond community consisting of Hynobius retardatus salamander larvae and their associated prey, I report empirical evidence that cannibalism among predators can increase predation on large heterospecific prey but reduce that on small heterospecific prey. In a field-enclosure experiment in which I manipulated the occurrence of salamander cannibalism, I found that salamander cannibalism increased predation on frog tadpoles but reduced that on aquatic insects simultaneously. The contrasting effects are most likely to be explained by prey body size. In the study system, frog tadpoles were too large for non-cannibal salamanders to consume, while aquatic insects were within the non-cannibals' consumable prey size range. However, when cannibalism occurred, a few individuals that succeeded in cannibalizing reached large enough size to consume frog tadpoles. Consequently, although cannibalism among salamanders reduced their density, salamander cannibalism increased predation on large prey frog tadpoles. Meanwhile, salamander cannibalism reduced predation on small prey aquatic insects probably because of a density reduction of non-cannibals primarily consuming aquatic insects. Body size is often correlated with various ecological traits, for instance, diet width, consumption, and excretion rates, and is thus considered a good indicator of species' effects on ecosystem function. All this considered, cannibalism among predators could eventually affect ecosystem function by shifting the size composition of the prey community.
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Project description:We have constructed a synthetic ecosystem consisting of two Escherichia coli populations, which communicate bi-directionally through quorum sensing and regulate each other's gene expression and survival via engineered gene circuits. Our synthetic ecosystem resembles canonical predator-prey systems in terms of logic and dynamics. The predator cells kill the prey by inducing expression of a killer protein in the prey, while the prey rescue the predators by eliciting expression of an antidote protein in the predator. Extinction, coexistence and oscillatory dynamics of the predator and prey populations are possible depending on the operating conditions as experimentally validated by long-term culturing of the system in microchemostats. A simple mathematical model is developed to capture these system dynamics. Coherent interplay between experiments and mathematical analysis enables exploration of the dynamics of interacting populations in a predictable manner.
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Project description:The predator discrimination of prey can affect predation intensity and the prey density dependence of predators, which has the potential to alter the coexistence of prey species. We used a predator-prey population dynamics model accounting for the predator's adaptive diet choice and predator discrimination of prey to investigate how the latter influences prey coexistence. The model revealed that (i) prey species that are perceived as belonging to the same species by a predator are attacked in the same manner, and it is more difficult for them to coexist than those that are recognized as different prey species, and (ii) prey species that are not discriminated by a predator-and therefore cannot coexist-may coexist in the presence of an alternative predator that does discriminate between them. These results suggest that prey diversity, which favours the predator discrimination of prey, and the different capabilities of predators to identify prey species both enhance prey coexistence.
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Project description:Factors maintaining the populations of diverse species that share limited resources or prey remain important issues in ecology. In the present study, I propose that heritable intraspecific variation in prey, which facilitates natural selection, is a key to solve this issue. A mathematical model reveals that diverse genotypes in a prey promote the coexistence of multiple predator species. When two predators share a prey with multiple genotypes, evolution nearly selects the two prey genotypes. Through analysis, I establish a condition of coexistence of such multiple predator-one prey interaction with two genotypes. If each prey type has high defensive capacity against different predator species, stable coexistence is likely to occur. Particularly, interspecific variations of life-history parameters allow the coexistence equilibrium to be stable. In addition, rapid evolution in a prey allows more than two predator species to coexist. Furthermore, mutation tends to stabilize otherwise unstable systems. These results suggest that intraspecific variation in a prey plays a key role in the maintenance of diverse predator species by driving adaptive evolution.
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Project description:Abstract Intraspecific variation is an important form of biodiversity that can alter community and ecosystem properties. Recent work demonstrates the community effects of intraspecific variation in predators via altering prey communities and in foundation species via shaping habitat attributes. However, tests of the community effects of intraspecific trait variation in predators acting on foundation species are lacking despite the fact that consumption of foundation species can have strong community effects by shaping habitat structure. Here, we tested the hypothesis that intraspecific foraging differences among populations of mussel‐drilling dogwhelk predators (Nucella) differentially alter intertidal communities through effects on foundational mussels. We conducted a 9‐month field experiment where we exposed intertidal mussel bed communities to predation from three Nucella populations that exhibit differences in size‐selectivity and consumption time for mussel prey. At the end of the experiment, we measured mussel bed structure, species diversity, and community composition. While exposure to Nucella originating from different populations did not significantly alter overall community diversity, we found that differences in Nucella mussel selectivity significantly altered foundational mussel bed structure, which in turn altered the biomass of shore crabs and periwinkle snails. Our study extends the emerging paradigm of the ecological importance of intraspecific variation to include the effects of intraspecific variation on predators of foundation species. Recent work demonstrates the community effects of intraspecific variation in predators via altering prey communities and in foundation species via shaping habitat attributes, but tests of the community effects of intraspecific trait variation in predators acting on foundation species are lacking. We used a 9‐month field experiment to test the hypothesis that intraspecific foraging differences among populations of mussel‐drilling dogwhelk predators differentially alter intertidal communities through effects on foundational mussels. We found that differences in dogwhelk prey selectivity significantly altered foundational mussel bed structure, which in turn altered the biomass of shore crabs and periwinkle snails, extending the emerging paradigm of the ecological importance of intraspecific variation to include the effects of intraspecific variation in predators of foundation species.
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Project description:Predation is one of the key ecological mechanisms allowing species coexistence and influencing biological diversity. However, ecological processes are subject to contemporary evolutionary change, and the degree to which predation affects diversity ultimately depends on the interplay between evolution and ecology. Furthermore, ecological interactions that influence species coexistence can be altered by reciprocal coevolution especially in the case of antagonistic interactions such as predation or parasitism. Here we used an experimental evolution approach to test for the role of initial trait variation in the prey population and coevolutionary history of the predator in the ecological dynamics of a two-species bacterial community predated by a ciliate. We found that initial trait variation both at the bacterial and ciliate level enhanced species coexistence, and that subsequent trait evolutionary trajectories depended on the initial genetic diversity present in the population. Our findings provide further support to the notion that the ecology-centric view of diversity maintenance must be reinvestigated in light of recent findings in the field of eco-evolutionary dynamics.
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