Phytoplankton are the unicellular photosynthetic microbes that form the base of aquatic ecosystems, and their responses to global change will impact everything from food web dynamics to global nutrient cycles. Some taxa respond to environmental change by increasing population growth rates in the short-term and are projected to increase in frequency over decades. To gain insight into how these projected 'climate change winners' evolve, we grew populations of microalgae in ameliorated environments for several hundred generations. Most populations evolved to allocate a smaller proportion of carbon to growth while increasing their ability to tolerate and metabolise reactive oxygen species (ROS). This trade-off drives the evolution of traits that underlie the ecological and biogeochemical roles of phytoplankton. This offers evolutionary and a metabolic frameworks for understanding trait evolution in projected 'climate change winners' and suggests that short-term population booms have the potential to be dampened or reversed when environmental amelioration persists.

中文翻译：

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质量-数量的权衡驱动模型微藻“气候变化赢家”中的功能性状进化。

浮游植物是构成水生生态系统基础的单细胞光合微生物，它们对全球变化的反应将影响从食物网动态到全球营养循环的一切。一些分类单元通过在短期内提高人口增长率来应对环境变化，并且预计在未来几十年中频率会增加。为了深入了解这些预计的“气候变化赢家”如何演变，我们在经过改善的环境中生长了数百代微藻。大多数种群进化为分配较小比例的碳来增长，同时增加了其耐受和代谢活性氧（ROS）的能力。这种权衡驱动着特性的发展，而这些特性是浮游植物在生态和生物地球化学中的基础。