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Resource supply drives even spacing of individuals along multiple trait axes in light-limited phytoplankton populations

View ORCID ProfileSimone Fontana, View ORCID ProfileMridul K. Thomas, Marta Reyes, View ORCID ProfileFrancesco Pomati
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/338129
Simone Fontana
1Department of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 133, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland
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Mridul K. Thomas
1Department of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 133, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland
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Marta Reyes
1Department of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 133, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland
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Francesco Pomati
1Department of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Überlandstrasse 133, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland
4Institute of Integrative Biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Universitätstrasse 16, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
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Abstract

Individual-level variation arising from responses to environmental gradients influences population and community dynamics. How such responses empirically relate to the mechanisms that govern species coexistence is however not well understood. Previous results from lake phytoplankton communities suggested that the evenness of organisms in multidimensional trait space increases with resource limitation, possibly due to resource partitioning at the individual level. Here we experimentally tested the emergence of this pattern by growing two phytoplankton species (Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata, Microcystis aeruginosa) under a gradient of light intensity, in monoculture and jointly. Under low light (resource) conditions, the populations diversified into a wide range of phenotypes, which were evenly distributed in multidimensional trait space (defined by four pigment-related trait dimensions), confirming the observed field pattern. Our results provide prime experimental evidence that resource limitation induces even spacing of conspecific and heterospecific microbial phenotypes along trait axes, and advances our understanding of trait-based coexistence.

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Posted June 04, 2018.
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Resource supply drives even spacing of individuals along multiple trait axes in light-limited phytoplankton populations
Simone Fontana, Mridul K. Thomas, Marta Reyes, Francesco Pomati
bioRxiv 338129; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/338129
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Resource supply drives even spacing of individuals along multiple trait axes in light-limited phytoplankton populations
Simone Fontana, Mridul K. Thomas, Marta Reyes, Francesco Pomati
bioRxiv 338129; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/338129

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