Fig. 3

Generations and mutations needed for readaptation in successfully adapting lineages. Populations under environmental change at 1000 generation intervals between the native and novel environment. As novel conditions, environments 1 and 2 defined in Table 2 were used. The number of generations (a) and mutations (b) needed to readapt is plotted at every back and forth change of the environment. The values are averaged over all WT-VCS replicate runs in the respective environment that are not ‘evolutionary dead-ends’. (see Additional file 1: Figure S1 for a larger set of environments)