21 Aug 2025. New publication out!

New publication out in PNAS!

In our new study just published in PNAS, we show that aphids feeding on duckweed (a floating plant) can set off a chain reaction that reshapes entire aquatic communities:

• Aphids reduce duckweed growth. With less duckweed, more light and nutrients reach the water, fueling algae growth.
• More algae means more food for Daphnia (tiny crustaceans often called “water fleas”), whose populations then boom.
• These ecological shifts put Daphnia under new selective pressures — and within just two years, we observed measurable evolutionary changes in their populations.
• Remarkably, these changes fed back to benefit plants and aphids, showing how indirect interactions can link organisms across land and water in unexpected ways.

This is one of the first direct demonstrations that indirect ecological effects can drive rapid evolutionary change in near-natural communities. It highlights just how tightly connected ecosystems are: what happens on a floating leaf can ripple all the way down to genetic evolution in plankton.

I’m thrilled to have contributed to this work – thanks Martin and Shuqing for this opportunity!

Read the press release here.

Read our paper here: