Adaptation to extreme stress under the growth-survival fitness trade-off
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866913108709081088 |
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| author | Chaturvedi, Nandita Tvishamayi, Charuhansini Thutupalli, Shashi |
| author_facet | Chaturvedi, Nandita Tvishamayi, Charuhansini Thutupalli, Shashi |
| contents | Microbial adaptation to extreme stress, such as starvation, antimicrobial exposure, or freezing often reveals fundamental trade-offs between survival and proliferation. Understanding how populations navigate these trade-offs in fluctuating environments remains a central challenge. We develop a quantitative model to investigate the adaptation of populations of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) subjected to cycles of growth and extreme freeze-thaw stress, focusing on the role of quiescence as a mediator of survival. Our model links key life-history traits: growth rate, lag time, quiescence probability, and stress survival, to a single underlying phenotype, motivated by the role of intracellular trehalose in the adaptation of yeast to freeze-thaw stress. Through stochastic population simulations and analytical calculation of the long-term growth rate, we identify the evolutionary attractors of the system. We find that the strength of the growth-survival trade-off depends critically on environmental parameters, such as the duration of the growth phase. Crucially, our analysis reveals that populations optimized for growth-stress cycles can often maintain viability alongside growth-optimized populations even in the absence of stress. This demonstrates that underlying physiological trade-offs do not necessarily translate into fitness trade-offs at the population level, providing general insights into the complex interplay between environmental fluctuations, physiological constraints, and evolutionary dynamics. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_18710 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Adaptation to extreme stress under the growth-survival fitness trade-off Chaturvedi, Nandita Tvishamayi, Charuhansini Thutupalli, Shashi Populations and Evolution Biological Physics Microbial adaptation to extreme stress, such as starvation, antimicrobial exposure, or freezing often reveals fundamental trade-offs between survival and proliferation. Understanding how populations navigate these trade-offs in fluctuating environments remains a central challenge. We develop a quantitative model to investigate the adaptation of populations of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) subjected to cycles of growth and extreme freeze-thaw stress, focusing on the role of quiescence as a mediator of survival. Our model links key life-history traits: growth rate, lag time, quiescence probability, and stress survival, to a single underlying phenotype, motivated by the role of intracellular trehalose in the adaptation of yeast to freeze-thaw stress. Through stochastic population simulations and analytical calculation of the long-term growth rate, we identify the evolutionary attractors of the system. We find that the strength of the growth-survival trade-off depends critically on environmental parameters, such as the duration of the growth phase. Crucially, our analysis reveals that populations optimized for growth-stress cycles can often maintain viability alongside growth-optimized populations even in the absence of stress. This demonstrates that underlying physiological trade-offs do not necessarily translate into fitness trade-offs at the population level, providing general insights into the complex interplay between environmental fluctuations, physiological constraints, and evolutionary dynamics. |
| title | Adaptation to extreme stress under the growth-survival fitness trade-off |
| topic | Populations and Evolution Biological Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18710 |