Date of Submission

Spring 2020

Academic Program

Biology

Project Advisor 1

Gabriel Perron

Project Advisor 2

Heather Bennett

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Global climate change is causing drastic alterations to nutrient content and availability for a variety of species. The multifaceted effects of climate change mean that all domains of life are vulnerable. This raises questions about whether or not organisms will be able to evolutionarily adapt to their new nutrient conditions. Here, we sought to explore the influences of different microbial diets on C. elegans fitness. We calculated egg laying and hatching rates of nematodes grown on three bacteria genus. Initial experimentation showed marked differences in C. elegans fitness as a result of food source. Further, in developing an experimental evolution procedure, we investigated whether C. elegans could evolutionarily adapt to its diet in just 15 generations. Overall, we found no differences in fitness over time for worms grown on either E. coli or B. subtilis.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Download

This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.

Bard Off-campus Download

Bard College faculty, staff, and students can login from off-campus by clicking on the Off-campus Download button and entering their Bard username and password.

Share

COinS