Fig. 6: Fitness of the ancestor could act as a predictor of pleiotropic fitness gains.

We test if the fitness of the ancestral population in an environment can act as a predictor of the fitness of an evolved population. We compare the fitness gain of an evolved population with ancestral fitness in away environments. (a, b) show these comparisons for r and K in synonymous environments, respectively. It must be noted that for each set of evolved populations, there were two synonymous away environments. We also plot relative fitness gains against ancestral fitness in eight non-synonymous environments. As shown in (c) (for growth rate) and (d) (yield), in most cases, there exists a trend – in non-synonymous environments, average pleiotropic fitness gains decrease with an increase in the fitness of the ancestor. However, there exists no such quantitative trend in the case of synonymous environments.