@article {166225, title = {Adaptation to extreme stress under the growth-survival fitness trade-off}, journal = {Phys. Rev. E}, volume = {113}, year = {2026}, month = {May}, pages = {054403}, abstract = {

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{\textemdash}growth rate, lag time, quiescence probability, and stress survival{\textemdash}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 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.

}, doi = {10.1103/nppw-z5lv}, url = {https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/nppw-z5lv}, author = {Chaturvedi, Nandita and Tvishamayi, Charuhansini and Thutupalli, Shashi} }