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World's fishing fleets mapped from orbit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43169824 View in LinkedIn

UNPREDICTABLE MAXIMAL FITNESS. “For instance, strains selected for glucose utilization will spawn populations specializing in the scavenging of acetate waste products. Such adaptive changes could spawn niche-specific, “orphan” genes found uniquely in particular bacterial genomes.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

NON-STATIC NICHES. “For example, we can measure how an organism improves in fitness when grown for thousands of generations under glucose-limited conditions; here the environment and the evolutionary challenges seem clearly defined. However, even bacteria confined to chemostats can subvert our plans for them, inventing new niches instead of refining methods for exploiting those we had defined.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

“TRADITIONAL MODELS of microbial evolution by mutational processes, combined with the measurement of environmental tolerances in laboratory environments, imparts a view of ecological niches as relatively static domains, within which organisms evolve predictably toward maximal fitness.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

PRECEDENT SITUATIONS. “There are documented instances—such as studies on Darwin’s finches—that show evolution of beak length results from differences in food availability.” https://lnkd.in/ghWux7x View in LinkedIn

RESTRUCTURING. “Recognition of gene transfer within and among lineages restructures microbial evolution in more ways than offering new interpretations of the pattern of microbial phylogeny.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

STUFFED BEAK LENGTHS. “The researchers then scoured museum collections and looked at specimens of the birds collected since the 1920s to confirm their findings. Something about the U.K. environment was giving longer beaks an edge.” https://lnkd.in/ghWux7x View in LinkedIn

SCALE AND SOURCE. “Horizontal gene transfer likely affects different lineages in different fashions, perhaps illustrated most dramatically by the minimal contribution of horizontal gene transfer in the evolution of intracellular parasites undergoing genome reduction. Consideration of scale and source can serve as effective arbiters when reconciling data collected from diverse systems.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

SLOW ROAD. “In contrast, variation introduced by point mutation will, most of the time, only adjust preexisting phenotypes.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn

BOLT-ON GENE SETS. “Horizontal gene transfer can fundamentally alter the character of a microbial species by introducing fully functional genes and gene clusters that can confer complex phenotypes and functions that allow effective and competitive exploitation of new niches.” https://lnkd.in/djKBnru View in LinkedIn