A look into the future- how increasing temperatures could affect organisms

The marine Roseobacter clade is an abundant heterotrophic bacterial group and plays an important role in marine communities. Kent et al. (2018) used Roseovarius sp. strain TM1035 and looked at the capacity and ecological implications of adaption to warmer ocean environments. This was done by running fitness and physiological assays to look at how stressful, high-temperature regimes would affect 500 generations of this strain. 

This study found that isolates which adapted to the high-temperature significantly improved their fitness and increased biofilm formation. Through extracting and sequencing the DNA, they identified genomic variation underlying high-temperature adaptation with more mutations occurring in the high versus low temperature lines. Results show a clear capacity for rapid adaption to elevated temperature through a significant lifestyle change. It would be interesting to see how the short-term rapid adaptive changes may differ from long-term establishments of distinct ecotypes adapted to higher temperatures. These changes may be different from the predictions assumed in this paper so would be interesting to look at. Overall, this study has helped us understand how increasing future temperatures could affect organismal physiology and how it could lead to an alteration in microbial lifestyle.

Kent, A.G., Garcia, C.A. and Martiny, A.C., 2018. Increased biofilm formation due to high-temperature adaptation in marine Roseobacter. Nature microbiology, 3(9), p.989.