BIO1022 Lab 1 Summary: Results and Discussion Submission

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Student ID:

Results (6 marks)

Complete your graph in Excel showing the rate of growth for a hypothetical population of
bacteria with no limitations (null hypothesis), the smooth morphs, and the wrinkly
spreaders, ensuring that you have completed the conversion from OD to population size for
WS and SM data.

Copy and paste the graph that you have created into the space below.

Ensure that you have

• 3 data sets (null hypothesis, SM, and WS) - 3 marks
• X & Y axis use an appropriate scale and units: X = time (hours), Y = average
population size (cells/mL) - 1 mark
• Appropriate graph caption is provided - 1 mark
• Appropriate graph legend is shown - 1 mark

Figure 1. Graph of average population sizes of the null hypothesis model, smooth morphs
and wrinkly spreaders in cells/mL against time in hours. A logarithmic scale was used for the
y-axis to accommodate for the exponential growth of the populations.

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 Discussion/Conclusion (8 marks)

You are required to write a 500 word discussion of your results. Ensure that your discussion
covers the following topics:
• How does shaking the culture bottles affect the bacteria growing inside them?
• Using the concept of evolution, what has happened in the non-shaken microcosm?
• Why have the wrinkly spreader variants not been able to grow to equal efficiency in
the growth curve compared to the smooth morph variants?
• If you grew the smooth morphs and the wrinkly spreaders separately for thousands
of generations, what would you expect to see in terms of their requirement for
oxygen?

Write your discussion in the space below:

Homogeneity in resources for bacterial growth, such as oxygen and nutrients levels, were
achieved throughout the microcosm by shaking the culture bottles, whereas a
heterogeneous condition was present throughout the non-shaken microcosm. Shaking the
culture bottles allows for increased oxygen penetration and even distribution of resources
for bacterial growth throughout the microcosm.

In the heterogeneous conditions of the non-shaken microcosm, oxygen supply for growth
was limited. The competition for oxygen resulted in the wrinkly spreader variant (WS) that
was better adapted to oxygen depletion than the smooth morphology variant (SM). Hence,
natural selection selected for the better adapted WS over the SM, leading to its increase in
proportion over time in the non-shaken microcosm. In the homogeneous conditions of the
shaken microcosm, oxygen supply for growth was not limited. Therefore, there was no
selective pressure to select for the evolution of the WS, hence WS did not grow in the
shaken microcosm.

The growth patterns in both the SM and WS did not resemble that of the null hypothesis
model as the growth curve of the null hypothesis model had assumed growth conditions of
unlimited space and resources. Such abiotic conditions were limited for the growth of the
SM and WS. The limits in resources and space resulted in competition within the populations
that limited the growth of both the SM and WS, therefore resulting in a difference in growth
patterns when compared to the null hypothesis.

In the homogeneous shaken microcosm, oxygen supply was not limited, hence there was no
selection pressure to limit the growth of the SM. Therefore, the costly production of
cellulose and possible metabolic defects expressed in the WS, but not in the SM, adversely
affected the growth efficiency of WS (fig. 1). It is expected that the WS would predominate
in an oxygen-limited environment with enough nutrients. Limited oxygen supply acts as a
selective pressure that selects for the better adapted to oxygen depletion WS, compared to
SM. However, as the production of cellulose in WS is costly, enough nutrients must be
present in the environment for the adaptations expressed in the WS to remain advantageous
enough to predominate over other phenotypes.

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 Assuming that the WS is grown in an oxygen-limited environment and the SM is grown in an
oxygen-sufficient environment, it is expected that the WS would evolve to decrease its
oxygen requirements over generations while the SM would maintain the same level of
oxygen requirements, as wildtype Pseudomonas fluorescens are aerobes. In an oxygen-
limited environment, limited oxygen supply will act as a selective pressure to select for
evolutionary adaptations helpful for surviving in such an environment, this selective
pressure would not be present in the oxygen-sufficient environment. Hence, different
evolutionary adaptations would be selected for within each separate population. These
different evolutionary adaptations would then accumulate and be fixed into each population
over time. Over generations, many accumulated evolutionary adaptations that are distinct
between the WS and SM would result in the speciation of the two populations.

References

Spiers AJ (2007) Wrinkly-Spreader fitness in the two-dimensional agar plate microcosm:

maladaptation, compensation and ecological success. PLoS One 2, e740. doi:
10.1371/journal.pone.0000740
Kuśmierska A, Spiers AJ (2016) New Insights into the Effects of Several Environmental
Parameters on the Relative Fitness of a Numerically Dominant Class of Evolved Niche
Specialist. International journal of evolutionary biology 2016, 4846565. doi:
10.1155/2016/4846565

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