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Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) collect wastewater from various sources for a multi-step treatment process. By mixing a large variety of bacteria and promoting their proximity, WWTPs constitute potential hotspots for the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Concerns have been expressed regarding the potential of WWTPs to spread antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) from environmental reser
Experimental microbial ecology and evolution have yielded foundational insights into ecological and evolutionary processes using simple microcosm setups and phenotypic assays with one- or two-species model systems. The fields are now increasingly incorporating more complex systems and exploration of the molecular basis of observations. For this purpose, simplified, manageable and well-defined mult
Low concentrations of antibiotics have numerous effects on bacteria. However, it is unknown whether ecological factors such as trophic interactions and spatial structuring influence the effects of low concentrations of antibiotics on multispecies microbial communities. Here, we address this question by investigating the effects of low antibiotic concentration on community composition and horizonta
Mobile genetic elements such as conjugative plasmids are responsible for antibiotic resistance phenotypes in many bacterial pathogens. The ability to conjugate, the presence of antibiotics, and ecological interactions all have a notable role in the persistence of plasmids in bacterial populations. Here, we set out to investigate the contribution of these factors when the conjugation network was di
Recognizing when and how rapid evolution drives ecological change is fundamental for our understanding of almost all ecological and evolutionary processes such as community assembly, genetic diversification and the stability of communities and ecosystems. Generally, rapid evolutionary change is driven through selection on genetic variation and is affected by evolutionary constraints, such as trade
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 altere
A tumour grows when the total division (birth) rate of its cells exceeds their total mortality (death) rate. The capability for uncontrolled growth within the host tissue is acquired via the accumulation of driver mutations which enable the tumour to progress through various hallmarks of cancer. We present a mathematical model of the penultimate stage in such a progression. We assume the tumour ha
Predator-prey interactions heavily influence the dynamics of many ecosystems. An increasing body of evidence suggests that rapid evolution and coevolution can alter these interactions, with important ecological implications, by acting on traits determining fitness, including reproduction, anti-predatory defence and foraging efficiency. However, most studies to date have focused only on evolution i
In an era of pervasive anthropogenic ecological disturbances, there is a pressing need to understand the factors that constitute community response and resilience. A detailed understanding of disturbance response needs to go beyond associations and incorporate features of disturbances, species traits, rapid evolution and dispersal. Multispecies microbial communities that experience antibiotic pert
Increasing body of experimental evidence suggests that anticancer and antimicrobial therapies may themselves promote the acquisition of drug resistance by increasing mutability. The successful control of evolving populations requires that such biological costs of control are identified, quantified and included to the evolutionarily informed treatment protocol. Here we identify, characterise and ex
Mutation supply can influence evolutionary and thereby ecological dynamics in important ways which have received little attention. Mutation supply influences features of population genetics, such as the pool of adaptive mutations, evolutionary pathways and importance of processes, such as clonal interference. The resultant trait evolutionary dynamics, in turn, can alter population size and species
A popular idea in ecology is that trait variation among individuals from the same species may promote the coexistence of competing species. However, theoretical and empirical tests of this idea have yielded inconsistent findings. We manipulated intraspecific trait diversity in a ciliate competing with a nematode for bacterial prey in experimental microcosms. We found that intraspecific trait varia
The increasing prevalence of antimicrobial-resistant bacterial infections has ushered in a major global public health crisis. Judicious or restricted antimicrobial use in animal agriculture, aiming to confine the use for the treatment of infections, is the most commonly proposed solution to reduce selection pressure for resistant bacterial strains and resistance genes. However, a multifaceted solu
The impact of fitness landscape features on evolutionary outcomes has attracted considerable interest in recent decades. However, evolution often occurs under time-dependent selection in so-called fitness seascapes where the landscape is under flux. Fitness seascapes are an inherent feature of natural environments, where the landscape changes owing both to the intrinsic fitness consequences of pre
Evolutionary prediction and control are increasingly interesting research topics that are expanding to new areas of application. Unravelling and anticipating successful adaptations to different selection pressures becomes crucial when steering rapidly evolving cancer or microbial populations towards a chosen target. Here we introduce and apply a rich theoretical framework of optimal control to und
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 ma
Evolution has traditionally been a historical and descriptive science, and predicting future evolutionary processes has long been considered impossible. However, evolutionary predictions are increasingly being developed and used in medicine, agriculture, biotechnology and conservation biology. Evolutionary predictions may be used for different purposes, such as to prepare for the future, to try an
Quantitative understanding of microbial growth is an essential prerequisite for successful control of pathogens as well as various biotechnology applications. Even though the growth of cell populations has been extensively studied, microbial growth remains poorly characterised at the spatial level. Indeed, even isogenic populations growing at different locations on solid growth medium typically sh
The natural world is under unprecedented and accelerating pressure. Much work on understanding resilience to local and global environmental change has, so far, focussed on ecosystems. However, understanding a system's behaviour requires knowledge of its component parts and their interactions. Here we call for increased efforts to understand 'biological resilience', or the processes that enable com
Understanding factors influencing community resilience to disturbance is critical for mitigating harm at various scales, including harm from medication to gut microbiota and harm from human activity to global biodiversity, yet there is a lack of data from large-scale controlled experiments. Factors expected to boost resilience include prior exposure to the same disturbance and dispersal from undis
