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Microorganisms, which are described as very small living entities that are invisible to the naked eye and can include bacteria, fungus, viruses, and other organisms, naturally compete with one another and work together in order to survive in the natural world. Which aspects of the “environmental stress” that individuals are exposed to as a result of global changes, such as rising sea levels, global warming, or air pollution, have an impact on them, and to what degree does this impact manifest itself?
Based on an experimental system that reproduced a mutualistic microbial community, Ignacio J. Melero-Jiménez, a researcher at the Department of Botany and Plant Physiology at the University of Malaga, has collaborated with an international scientific team to demonstrate that the preferred evolutionary solution for two co-dependent microbes to survive harsh environmental change could be to become self-sustaining.
“Evolutionary rescue” is the term used to describe this occurrence, which refers to a quick genetic adaptation that enables species to avoid extinction in conditions that are critical. When it comes to avoiding extinction, this particular instance of mutualism is broken as an evolutionary solution.
A postdoctoral stay at the University of Massachusetts Amherst resulted in the research that was carried out over the course of more than two years. The investigations were first carried out at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) under the direction of researcher Jonathan Friedman and, afterwards, genetic testing and data processing occurred at the Center for Plant Biotechnology and Genomics of the UPM-INIA/CSIC in Madrid, under the guidance of the expert Alejandro Couce.
Sources:
Intraspecies dynamics underlie the apparent stability of two important skin microbiome species, Cell Host & Microbe (2025). https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(25)00143-X
https://phys.org/news/2025-05-evolutionary-microbes-environmental-stress-sacrifice.html
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