High dimensional eco-evolutionary dynamics using consumer-resource models

Microbes live and adapt in the context of large, complex communities, in the ocean, in human microbiomes and in many other natural settings. Recently, stable coexistence has been shown to evolve spontaneously and reproducibly in clonal evolution experiments, suggesting that diversification and evolution can occur on comparable timescales and may feed back on each other. However, the signatures of this feedback are not well understood in ecosystems with many coexisting species. In order to probe how the timescales of ecological and evolutionary change control the behavior of such systems, we present a minimal model of eco-evolutionary dynamics based on the well-known consumer-resource model, incorporating both resource strategies on a set of substitutable resources and fitness. Using the model, we map how mutation rates in strategy and fitness space impact ecological observables like species-level diversity and evolutionary observables like phylogenetic trees. Inspired by these results, we suggest quantitative measurements to probe the resilience and adaptation of microbial ecosystems to natural selection.