Temporal Changes in the Role of Species Sorting and Evolution Determine Community Dynamics

Abstract

Evolutionary change within community members and shifts in species composition via species sorting contribute to community and trait dynamics. However, we do not understand when and how both processes contribute to community dynamics. Here, we estimated the contributions of species sorting and evolution over time (60 days) in bacterial communities of 24 species under selection by a ciliate predator. We found that species sorting contributed to increased community carrying capacity, while evolution contributed to decreased anti-predator defences. The relative roles of both processes changed over time, and our analysis indicates that if initial trait variation was in the direction of selection, species sorting prevailed, otherwise evolution drove phenotypic change. Furthermore, community composition, population densities and genomic evolution were affected by phenotypic match–mismatch combinations of predator and prey evolutionary history. Overall, our findings help to integrate when and how ecological and evolutionary processes structure communities.