Quality-quantity tradeoffs drive functional trait evolution in a model microalgal “climate change winner”

Phytoplankton are the unicellular photosynthetic microbes that form the base of aquatic ecosystems, and their responses to global change will impact everything from food web dynamics to global nutrient cycles. Some taxa respond to environmental change by increasing population growth rates in the short-term, and are projected to increase in frequency over decades. To gain insight into how these projected “climate change winners” evolve, we grew populations of microalgae in ameliorated environments for several hundred generations. Most populations evolved to allocate a smaller proportion of carbon to growth while increasing their ability to tolerate and metabolise reactive oxygen species (ROS). This tradeoff drives the evolution of traits that underlie the ecological and biogeochemical roles of phytoplankton. This offers evolutionary and a metabolic frameworks for understanding trait evolution in projected “climate change winners”, and suggests that short-term population booms have the po...浮游植物（Phytoplankton）是构成水生生态系统基础的单细胞光合微生物，它们对全球变化的响应将影响从食物网动态到全球营养循环的诸多过程。部分类群会通过短期提升种群增长率来响应环境变化，预计其在未来数十年内的出现频率将上升。为探究这些被预测为“气候变化赢家”的类群如何演化，我们在改良环境中对微藻种群进行了长达数百代的培养。多数种群演化出了将更少碳分配用于生长的策略，同时增强了耐受与代谢活性氧（ROS）的能力。这种演化权衡驱动了支撑浮游植物生态与生物地球化学功能的性状演化，为理解被预测为“气候变化赢家”的类群的性状演化提供了演化与代谢层面的理论框架，并表明短期种群爆发具有潜...