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Organisms Form A Complexity Of Relationships In The Gram-Negative Consequences Of Bacterial Species

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In the natural environment, organisms form a complexity of relationships, these interactions aid the composition and maintenance of genetic variation within ecosystems. The interaction of a predator with its prey offers one such example. To become a successful predator an organism is likely to be subject to trade-offs. This project aimed to begin identification of phenotypic trade-offs, and the genes that control them, during the predation of multiple bacterial species by the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. The study looked to increase tractability of previously used bacterial virulence assays by completing multiple experiments on a single 24-well plate. The assay displayed the Gram-negative bacterium, Klebsiella aerogenes to be …show more content…

However, this is not always observed.
An organism’s fitness is largely determined by circumstance, if food becomes limited, an organism highly adapted to a single given food source will not fare as well as it does when food is plentiful. For such reason the natural world provides many examples of predators capable of gaining energy from multiple sources (Ardanuy, Albajes and Turlings, 2016; Sanders, Vogel and Knop, 2015; Smout et al., 2010; Xu et al., 2012; Clarke, 2010; Poysa, Jalava and Paasivaara, 2016). In predatory environments, species that are capable of surviving and thriving on multiple food sources are referred to as generalist predators, while those that feed only on a narrow range of prey are said to be specialist. In terms of predation efficiency predators of both types can be equally effective: specialist predators gain all the energy possible from a single source, while generalists likely gain less energy per individual meal but have a wider-niche and thus can eat more regularly. The outcome of which strategy has the highest efficiency will typically depend on the structure of the environment and population in which the predator exists. While predation is always prominent, it is never the only trait under selection. To stably maintain genetic and ecologic diversities organisms must commit trade-offs. Trade-offs occur when proficiency in one phenotypic trait is increased at the expense of another (Stearns, 1976).

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