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Antibiotic resistance: Evolution without trade-offs

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 1, Article number: 0066 (2017) Cite this article

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Artificial selection for antibiotic resistance in microorganisms reveals why and how expected evolutionary trade-offs between population growth rate and population carrying capacity are not observed in resource-limited environments, with ‘trade-ups’ occurring instead.

Compromise is a rare commodity in contemporary politics, but it has the status of law in some areas of biology. One such area is the theory of life-history evolution, which traditionally assumes compromise, or trade-offs, among competing resource investments in growth, reproduction and maintenance. A compelling challenge to such assumed compromise is the empirical observation of apparent superorganisms that seem to have more of everything in comparison with their ancestors or other members of their species. Writing in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Reding-Roman et al.1 present us with another superorganism, this time in an experimentally evolved antibiotic-resistant bacterium. Their selection lines sustain higher population growth rates and attain higher carrying capacities than control lines. In doing so, they defy the anticipated trade-off between intrinsic population growth rate and carrying capacity assumed in the theory of r- and K-selection, an early representative of life history theory.

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Figure 1: The superorganism phenomenon across environments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. David Reznick is in the Department of Biology, University of California, Riverside, California 92521, USA.,

    David Reznick

  2. Kayla King is in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.,

    Kayla King

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  1. David Reznick
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  2. Kayla King
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Correspondence to David Reznick or Kayla King.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Reznick, D., King, K. Antibiotic resistance: Evolution without trade-offs. Nat Ecol Evol 1, 0066 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-016-0066

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