Using rotifer-algal microcosms, we tracked rapid evolution resulting from temporally changing natural selection in ecological predator-prey dynamics. We previously demonstrated that predatorprey oscillations in rotifer-algal laboratory microcosms are qualitatively altered by the presence of genetic variation within the prey. In that study, changes in algal gene frequencies were inferred from their effects on population dynamics but not observed directly. Here, we document rapid prey evolution in this system by directly observing changes in Chlorella vulgaris genotype frequencies as the abundances of these algae and their consumer, Brachionus calyciflorus, change through time. We isolated a group of algal clones that we could distinguish by using microsatellite-DNA markers, and developed an allele-specific quantitative PCR technique (AsQ-PCR) to quantify the frequencies of pairs of clones in mixed culture. We showed that two of these genotypes exhibited a fitness tradeoff in which one was more resistant to predation (more digestion-resistant), and the other had faster population growth under limiting nitrogen concentrations. A fully specified mathematical model for the rotifer-algal population and evolutionary dynamics predicted that these two clones would undergo a single oscillation in clonal frequencies followed by asymptotic fixation of the more resistant clone, rather than the recurrent oscillations previously observed with other algal clones. We used AsQ-PCR to confirm this prediction: the superior competitor dominated initially, but as rotifer densities increased, the more predator-resistant clone predominated.Chlorella vulgaris ͉ clonal models ͉ evolutionary tradeoff ͉ grazing resistance ͉ rapid evolution T here has been an increasing appreciation during the past three decades that ecological and evolutionary dynamics can operate on similar time scales and interact in important ways. For example, genetic variation in a prey population can permit evolution that radically alters predator-prey dynamics (1, 2), evolution in environmentally threatened populations can affect population recovery (3), and rapid evolution is now seen as a critical component shaping disease dynamics (e.g., in HIV, refs. 4-7). Each of these discoveries was to some extent unexpected because, despite a growing number of examples of rapid evolution (8-11), the default expectation has often continued to be that ecological and evolutionary dynamics occur on different time scales (12, 13). Although recent discoveries challenge this notion (e.g., refs. 14-16), direct demonstrations of the mechanistic interplay between genetic change and ecological process remain rare. Here, we present a clear demonstration of prey evolution in concert with temporal changes in predator and prey densities, using genetic markers to quantify the evolutionary dynamics.Laboratory microcosms of rapidly reproducing interacting species have proven to be effective systems for the study of simultaneous ecological and evolutionary dynamics (17), including consumer-vic...