Rapid evolution leads to differential population dynamics and top-down control in resurrected Daphnia populations

There is growing evidence of rapid genetic adaptation of natural populations to environmental change, opening the perspective that evolutionary trait change may subsequently impact ecological processes such as population dynamics, community composition and ecosystem functioning. To study such eco-evolutionary feedbacks in natural populations, however, requires samples across time. Here we capitalize on a resurrection ecology study that documented rapid and adaptive evolution in a natural population of the water flea Daphnia magna in response to strong changes in predation pressure by fish, and carry out a follow-up mesocosm experiment to test whether the observed genetic changes influence population dynamics and top-down control of phytoplankton. We inoculated populations of the water flea D. magna derived from three time periods of the same natural population known to have genetically adapted to changes in predation pressure in replicate mesocosms, and monitored both Daphnia population...