Discussion
Using resurrection ecology, we provide unique evidence that changes in predation pressure can drive rapid evolution of metabolomes and their plasticity in a natural prey population. The high-fish subpopulation evolved the strongest metabolomic response to predation risk thereby matching the changes in fish predation pressure across periods and the previously documented adaptive changes in life history, morphology and behaviour (Stokset al. 2016). Key findings about the interplay of plasticity and evolution were (i) that ancestral plasticity and evolution contributed nearly equally in driving total metabolomic changes through time with the evolution of plasticity being the larger evolutionary component, (ii) and that the ancestral plasticity in the metabolome covaried positively with evolution of plasticity when predation pressure increased while this pattern reversed with subsequent relaxation of predation pressure.