The Ecology and Genetics of Fitness in Chlamydomonas. Iv. the Properties of Mixtures of Genotypes of the Same Species.

The properties of mixtures of genotypes of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii were investigated by growing them in monoculture and in all possible pairwise combinations in chemically defined axenic medium. Two sets of genotypes produced by crossing wild-type isolates were cultured in each of two physical environments. Mixtures were consistently more productive and less variable over environments than were their constituent monocultures. The average performance of a genotype in mixture was tightly correlated with its performance in monoculture. Reisolation of spores from mixtures at the end of growth showed that the mixtures became dominated by the component with the greater performance in monoculture, so that the properties of mixtures were attributable to replacement rather than to complementation. These results differ from those of similar trials using a range of different species of Chlamydomonas, where genetic interactions were found to be important. They are discussed in relation to theories of diversity and diversification, and related to the agronomic use of crop mixtures.