Stress, parasites et variabilité spatio-temporelle : patrons d'évolution et de coévolution – EvolStress

Stress response is one of the most studied themes in the biological sciences and has, in recent years, gained considerable attention for its importance to ecology and evolutionary biology. Stress occurs when an organism's functions are disrupted by an environmental change. This is accompanied by either tolerance or avoidance of the stress, with potential consequences for survival and/or reproduction. Impacts on survival and reproduction translate into effects on individual fitness, and therefore open possibilities for adaptation to stress through genetic evolution. Sources of stress are numerous, and each may vary in complex ways in time and in space. How do organisms adapt to stressful conditions and what are the implications for tightly-coupled interactions with other species' We will address these basic questions and a suite of more detailed unknowns through experimental and theoretical investigations of microbial host-parasite associations. The exciting prospect of this research is demonstrating how limits to adaptation in bacterial hosts and their coevolving parasites create pattern in diversity, life-history tradeoffs, and generative mechanisms of diversity such as mutation rates. Given the increasing realization of the importance of natural enemies in the structure and functioning of ecological communities and increasing preoccupations with disease-causing microbes, our results will stimulate future fundamental research, and have possible applications to agriculture, species conservation, and human health. Our project is interdisciplinary in being at the interface of ecology and evolutionary biology, and will provide a unique opportunity to employ complementary theoretical, experimental and molecular approaches towards understanding the mechanisms driving adaptation in complex environments. Our project will benefit from associations with colleagues in our vibrant research department, and from collaborators at British universities.