ArticleScientific reports2019
De novo origins of multicellularity in response to predation.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 69 papers.
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Who cites it
69 citing papers in PubMed.
- Review
- Predation in microbial communities: gradients of nutritive killing.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- The limits of information in precise regulation of early multicellular life cycles.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Stochastic phenotypic switching arises in response to directional selection in experimentally evolved multicellular yeast.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Rewilding microbiology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Article
- Predation, evo-devo, and historical contingency: A nematode predator drives evolution of aggregative multicellularity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Genetic Predisposition Toward Multicellularity in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Tissue-like multicellular development triggered by mechanical compression in archaea.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Adaptive evolutionary trajectories in complexity: Transitions between unicellularity and facultative differentiated multicellularity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Open problems in synthetic multicellularity.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2024Article
- Individuality Through Ecology: Rethinking the Evolution of Complex Life From an Externalist Perspective.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Effects of Toxic and Non-ToxicMicroorganisms · 2024Article
- Lipids from a snail host regulate the multicellular behavior of a predator of parasitic schistosomes.iScience · 2024Article
- Multicellularity and increasing Reynolds number impact on the evolutionary shift in flash-induced ciliary response in Volvocales.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Multicellular magnetotactic bacteria are genetically heterogeneous consortia with metabolically differentiated cells.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Emergence and maintenance of stable coexistence during a long-term multicellular evolution experiment.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Cryogenian Origins of Multicellularity in Archaeplastida.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Ecological and evolutionary dynamics of cell-virus-virophage systems.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Host lipids regulate multicellular behavior of a predator of a human pathogen.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
9 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The transition from unicellular to multicellular life was one of a few major events in the history of life that created new opportunities for more complex biological systems to evolve. Predation is hypothesized as one selective pressure that may have driven the evolution of multicellularity. Here we show that de novo origins of simple multicellularity can evolve in response to predation. We subjected outcrossed populations of the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to selection by the filter-feeding predator Paramecium tetraurelia. Two of five experimental populations evolved multicellular structures not observed in unselected control populations within ~750 asexual generations. Considerable variation exists in the evolved multicellular life cycles, with both cell number and propagule size varying among isolates. Survival assays show that evolved multicellular traits provide effective protection against predation. These results support the hypothesis that selection imposed by predators may have played a role in some origins of multicellularity.
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