Ivo Chelo
Researcher (EE Group)

In nature, adaptation to new environments results in changes in many phenotypes as a result of optimization to a variety of new conditions that are experienced simultaneously.
For evolutionary biology, this creates an added difficulty in understanding what populations adapt to. This is specially the case when populations from different species are involved and evolution of each one, together with the evolution of their interactions, needs to be considered.
In this talk I will describe how we are addressing this problem using experimental evolution of C.elegans and E.coli. I will report on previous work on C.elegans adaptation to high salt under laboratory defined conditions and recent work about E. coli experimental evolution to the exact same environment.
Putting together results from both approaches will clarify how the same environment is perceived differently by both species and what to expect from their interactions during co-adaptation.