Fig. 4

Trajectories towards a growth versus yield trade-off end in either the high growth rate mode or the high yield mode. a Growth rate (average building block production rate) is plotted against daily yield (average population biomass within a single cycle), for all the 48 experiments after adaptation to 800 serial transfers. The black dotted line is a linear regression model (R² = 0.54). b Shows the initial points for all 16 WTs, which actually have a positive correlation between growth and yield (R² = 0.32) instead of the negative correlation (black dotted line). c-e These insets display how the repeated evolution of certain WTs produce very similar trajectories towards the trade-off (time points are day 0, 20, 40, 100, 200 and 800), ending in either high daily yield (c) or low daily yield (d). Other WTs diverge after reaching the trade-off, and thus show more diverse trajectories when repeated (e). The colours of the end point symbols depict different modes of adaptation as discussed in the next paragraph (grey = no coexistence, purple = (quasi-)stable coexistence, black cross = extinction due to over-exploiting the medium)