On the evolution of collective properties in nested Darwinian populations (Silvia De Monte, 201208)
Channel: Modelling in Ecology and Evolution
Date: 21/01/2021

The keynote talk by Silvia De Monte (IBENS, Paris, FR and MPI Evolutionary Biology, Plön, DE) from the session of 8th of December 2020, with the title "On the evolution of collective properties in nested Darwinian populations"

Abstract
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The extent to which natural communities can be seen as 'superorganisms'  whose collective properties can be directly selected is unclear. Methods of high-throughput screening and selection of microbial communities have recently raised the possibility of exerting artificial selection so  as to obtain desirable community-level properties. In this talk, I will  address the question of how a target collective phenotype comes to be reinforced in the course of evolution by successive changes in the traits of the composing units. I will use a simple two-species model to illustrate the effects of selection for community composition on community ecology. In this model, communities are periodically assessed for their properties and a new generation of collectives is generated by dilution of the best performing ones. In particular, I will discuss the role of the collective generation time scale and bottleneck size in facilitating the emergence, through the adjustment of species  interactions, of an evolutionarily stable composition. As in developmental processes, the achievement of the optimal composition is realized by 'ecological canalization', which buffers against initial fluctuations in newborn community composition. Finally, I will discuss some ongoing efforts for understanding what emergent properties of more complex communities can be more efficiently acted upon by natural selection.