7/ This study has been one of the most rewarding moments of my postdoc. Working with @jfriedman.bsky.social (HUJI), Alejandro Couce (CBGP) , and the incredible people in their labs has made this experience both intellectually enriching and personally fulfilling 😁

6/ Obligate cooperation, beneficial under stable conditions, can become a liability during environmental disruption. This underscores the need for robust microbial consortia that account for potential breakdowns in cooperation, critical for both microbial ecology and synthetic biology.

5/Evolutionary rescue isn’t just about mutations, it’s shaped by ecological structure. In obligate mutualisms, interdependence can define the fitness landscape. Under stress, one partner’s ability to escape dependence can determine the survival of the community.

4/ Mutualistic consortia were markedly more sensitive to stress than prototrophic controls. As soon as one strain evolved independence, stress tolerance improved enough to ensure persistence.
In this context, cooperation constrained evolvability,

3/ We consider several factors: how easily metabolic autonomy is regained, and the role of demographic factors shaping population dynamics. These likely determine which strain survives—but why does gaining autonomy offer such an advantage?

2/ Over 80% of mutualistic consortia underwent evolutionary rescue. Yet intriguingly, the same strain consistently survived by regaining metabolic autonomy, while its partner went extinct.

What factors determined which strain gained this adaptive advantage?