Journal articles on the topic '060411 Population, Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics'
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1
Ferriere, Regis, and Stéphane Legendre. "Eco-evolutionary feedbacks, adaptive dynamics and evolutionary rescue theory." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 368, no. 1610 (January 19, 2013): 20120081. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0081.
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Adaptive dynamics theory has been devised to account for feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes. Doing so opens new dimensions to and raises new challenges about evolutionary rescue. Adaptive dynamics theory predicts that successive trait substitutions driven by eco-evolutionary feedbacks can gradually erode population size or growth rate, thus potentially raising the extinction risk. Even a single trait substitution can suffice to degrade population viability drastically at once and cause ‘evolutionary suicide’. In a changing environment, a population may track a viable evolutionary attractor that leads to evolutionary suicide, a phenomenon called ‘evolutionary trapping’. Evolutionary trapping and suicide are commonly observed in adaptive dynamics models in which the smooth variation of traits causes catastrophic changes in ecological state. In the face of trapping and suicide, evolutionary rescue requires that the population overcome evolutionary threats generated by the adaptive process itself. Evolutionary repellors play an important role in determining how variation in environmental conditions correlates with the occurrence of evolutionary trapping and suicide, and what evolutionary pathways rescue may follow. In contrast with standard predictions of evolutionary rescue theory, low genetic variation may attenuate the threat of evolutionary suicide and small population sizes may facilitate escape from evolutionary traps.
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Pelletier, F., D. Garant, and A. P. Hendry. "Eco-evolutionary dynamics." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364, no. 1523 (June 12, 2009): 1483–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0027.
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Evolutionary ecologists and population biologists have recently considered that ecological and evolutionary changes are intimately linked and can occur on the same time-scale. Recent theoretical developments have shown how the feedback between ecological and evolutionary dynamics can be linked, and there are now empirical demonstrations showing that ecological change can lead to rapid evolutionary change. We also have evidence that microevolutionary change can leave an ecological signature. We are at a stage where the integration of ecology and evolution is a necessary step towards major advances in our understanding of the processes that shape and maintain biodiversity. This special feature about ‘eco-evolutionary dynamics’ brings together biologists from empirical and theoretical backgrounds to bridge the gap between ecology and evolution and provide a series of contributions aimed at quantifying the interactions between these fundamental processes.
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de Vries, Charlotte, and Hal Caswell. "Stage-Structured Evolutionary Demography: Linking Life Histories, Population Genetics, and Ecological Dynamics." American Naturalist 193, no. 4 (April 2019): 545–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/701857.
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Ezard, Thomas H. G., Steeve D. Côté, and Fanie Pelletier. "Eco-evolutionary dynamics: disentangling phenotypic, environmental and population fluctuations." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364, no. 1523 (June 12, 2009): 1491–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0006.
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Decomposing variation in population growth into contributions from both ecological and evolutionary processes is of fundamental concern, particularly in a world characterized by rapid responses to anthropogenic threats. Although the impact of ecological change on evolutionary response has long been acknowledged, the converse has predominantly been neglected, especially empirically. By applying a recently published conceptual framework, we assess and contrast the relative importance of phenotypic and environmental variability on annual population growth in five ungulate populations. In four of the five populations, the contribution of phenotypic variability was greater than the contribution of environmental variability, although not significantly so. The similarity in the contributions of environment and phenotype suggests that neither is worthy of neglect. Population growth is a consequence of multiple processes, which strengthens arguments advocating integrated approaches to assess how populations respond to their environments.
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Westbury, Michael V., Diana Le Duc, David A. Duchêne, Arunkumar Krishnan, Stefan Prost, Sereina Rutschmann, Jose H. Grau, et al. "Ecological Specialization and Evolutionary Reticulation in Extant Hyaenidae." Molecular Biology and Evolution 38, no. 9 (February 24, 2021): 3884–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab055.
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Abstract During the Miocene, Hyaenidae was a highly diverse family of Carnivora that has since been severely reduced to four species: the bone-cracking spotted, striped, and brown hyenas, and the specialized insectivorous aardwolf. Previous studies investigated the evolutionary histories of the spotted and brown hyenas, but little is known about the remaining two species. Moreover, the genomic underpinnings of scavenging and insectivory, defining traits of the extant species, remain elusive. Here, we generated an aardwolf genome and analyzed it together with the remaining three species to reveal their evolutionary relationships, genomic underpinnings of their scavenging and insectivorous lifestyles, and their respective genetic diversities and demographic histories. High levels of phylogenetic discordance suggest gene flow between the aardwolf lineage and the ancestral brown/striped hyena lineage. Genes related to immunity and digestion in the bone-cracking hyenas and craniofacial development in the aardwolf showed the strongest signals of selection, suggesting putative key adaptations to carrion and termite feeding, respectively. A family-wide expansion in olfactory receptor genes suggests that an acute sense of smell was a key early adaptation. Finally, we report very low levels of genetic diversity within the brown and striped hyenas despite no signs of inbreeding, putatively linked to their similarly slow decline in effective population size over the last ∼2 million years. High levels of genetic diversity and more stable population sizes through time are seen in the spotted hyena and aardwolf. Taken together, our findings highlight how ecological specialization can impact the evolutionary history, demographics, and adaptive genetic changes of an evolutionary lineage.
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Ross, Perran A., Michael Turelli, and Ary A. Hoffmann. "Evolutionary Ecology of Wolbachia Releases for Disease Control." Annual Review of Genetics 53, no. 1 (December 3, 2019): 93–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-genet-112618-043609.
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Wolbachia is an endosymbiotic Alphaproteobacteria that can suppress insect-borne diseases through decreasing host virus transmission (population replacement) or through decreasing host population density (population suppression). We contrast natural Wolbachia infections in insect populations with Wolbachia transinfections in mosquitoes to gain insights into factors potentially affecting the long-term success of Wolbachia releases. Natural Wolbachia infections can spread rapidly, whereas the slow spread of transinfections is governed by deleterious effects on host fitness and demographic factors. Cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI) generated by Wolbachia is central to both population replacement and suppression programs, but CI in nature can be variable and evolve, as can Wolbachia fitness effects and virus blocking. Wolbachia spread is also influenced by environmental factors that decrease Wolbachia titer and reduce maternal Wolbachia transmission frequency. More information is needed on the interactions between Wolbachia and host nuclear/mitochondrial genomes, the interaction between invasion success and local ecological factors, and the long-term stability of Wolbachia-mediated virus blocking.
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Sadras, Victor O. "Evolutionary and ecological perspectives on the wheat phenotype." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 288, no. 1958 (September 8, 2021): 20211259. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.1259.
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Technologies, from molecular genetics to precision agriculture, are outpacing theory, which is becoming a bottleneck for crop improvement. Here, we outline theoretical insights on the wheat phenotype from the perspective of three evolutionary and ecologically important relations—mother–offspring, plant–insect and plant–plant. The correlation between yield and grain number has been misinterpreted as cause-and-effect; an evolutionary perspective shows a striking similarity between crop and fishes. Both respond to environmental variation through offspring number; seed and egg size are conserved. The offspring of annual plants and semelparous fishes, lacking parental care, are subject to mother–offspring conflict and stabilizing selection. Labile reserve carbohydrates do not fit the current model of wheat yield; they can stabilize grain size, but involve trade-offs with root growth and grain number, and are at best neutral for yield. Shifting the focus from the carbon balance to an ecological role, we suggest that labile carbohydrates may disrupt aphid osmoregulation, and thus contribute to wheat agronomic adaptation. The tight association between high yield and low competitive ability justifies the view of crop yield as a population attribute whereby the behaviour of the plant becomes subordinated within that of the population, with implications for genotyping, phenotyping and plant breeding.
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Logares, Ramiro. "Population genetics: the next stop for microbial ecologists?" Open Life Sciences 6, no. 6 (December 1, 2011): 887–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/s11535-011-0086-9.
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AbstractMicrobes play key roles in the functioning of the biosphere. Still, our knowledge about their total diversity is very limited. In particular, we lack a clear understanding of the evolutionary dynamics occurring within their populations (i.e. among members of the same biological species). Unlike animals and plants, microbes normally have huge population sizes, high reproductive rates and the potential for unrestricted dispersal. As a consequence, the knowledge of population genetics acquired from studying animals and plants cannot be applied without extensive testing to microbes. Next generation molecular tools, like High Throughput Sequencing (e.g. 454 and Illumina) coupled to Single Cell Genomics, now allow investigating microbial populations at a very fine scale. Such techniques have the potential to shed light on several ecological and evolutionary processes occurring within microbial populations that so far have remained hidden. Furthermore, they may facilitate the identification of microbial species. Eventually, we may find an answer to the question of whether microbes and multicellular organisms follow the same or different rules in their population diversification patterns.
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Coulson, T., T. G. Benton, P. Lundberg, S. R. X. Dall, B. E. Kendall, and J. M. Gaillard. "Estimating individual contributions to population growth: evolutionary fitness in ecological time." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 273, no. 1586 (December 6, 2005): 547–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3357.
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Ecological and evolutionary change is generated by variation in individual performance. Biologists have consequently long been interested in decomposing change measured at the population level into contributions from individuals, the traits they express and the alleles they carry. We present a novel method of estimating individual contributions to population growth and changes in distributions of quantitative traits and alleles. An individual's contribution to population growth is an individual's realized annual fitness. We demonstrate how the quantities we develop can be used to address a range of empirical questions, and provide an application to a detailed dataset of Soay sheep. The approach provides results that are consistent with those obtained using lifetime estimates of individual performance, yet is substantially more powerful as it allows lifetime performance to be decomposed into annual survival and fecundity contributions.
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Pertoldi, C., L. A. Bach, J. C. Svenning, C. Damgaard, and M. Bayley. "Contributions from population genetics to ecotoxicology and stress ecology in light of transformation to the population genomic era." Archives of Biological Sciences 64, no. 2 (2012): 557–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/abs1202557p.
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With the advent of the genomic era, which has partly been driven by advances in stress ecology, there is enormous growth in molecular and computer simulation techniques. Here we propose combining some of these techniques to give more elaborate risk assessments that include the effects of population variation in genotypes, phenotypes, and the way they link to aspects of life history and adaptive potential. We focused on ways to ascertain whether phenotypic plasticity or evolutionary responses constitute the basis for observed stress responses, as well as on the extrapolation problem, i.e. how do responses under controlled conditions correspond to those observed in natural ecological populations or in evolutionary end-points of interest? Additionally, we discuss the ways to integrate environmental variability into risk analysis and pest control predictions that include gene-environment interactions, focusing also on the importance of erosion of genetic diversity by toxic stressors to the risk of population extinction.
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Chapelle, Valentine, and Frédéric Silvestre. "Population Epigenetics: The Extent of DNA Methylation Variation in Wild Animal Populations." Epigenomes 6, no. 4 (September 28, 2022): 31. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/epigenomes6040031.
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Population epigenetics explores the extent of epigenetic variation and its dynamics in natural populations encountering changing environmental conditions. In contrast to population genetics, the basic concepts of this field are still in their early stages, especially in animal populations. Epigenetic variation may play a crucial role in phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation as it can be affected by the environment, it is likely to have higher spontaneous mutation rate than nucleotide sequences do, and it may be inherited via non-mendelian processes. In this review, we aim to bring together natural animal population epigenetic studies to generate new insights into ecological epigenetics and its evolutionary implications. We first provide an overview of the extent of DNA methylation variation and its autonomy from genetic variation in wild animal population. Second, we discuss DNA methylation dynamics which create observed epigenetic population structures by including basic population genetics processes. Then, we highlight the relevance of DNA methylation variation as an evolutionary mechanism in the extended evolutionary synthesis. Finally, we suggest new research directions by highlighting gaps in the knowledge of the population epigenetics field. As for our results, DNA methylation diversity was found to reveal parameters that can be used to characterize natural animal populations. Some concepts of population genetics dynamics can be applied to explain the observed epigenetic structure in natural animal populations. The set of recent advancements in ecological epigenetics, especially in transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in wild animal population, might reshape the way ecologists generate predictive models of the capacity of organisms to adapt to changing environments.
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Scheuerl, Thomas, Johannes Cairns, Lutz Becks, and Teppo Hiltunen. "Predator coevolution and prey trait variability determine species coexistence." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 286, no. 1902 (May 15, 2019): 20190245. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0245.
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Predation is one of the key ecological mechanisms allowing species coexistence and influencing biological diversity. However, ecological processes are subject to contemporary evolutionary change, and the degree to which predation affects diversity ultimately depends on the interplay between evolution and ecology. Furthermore, ecological interactions that influence species coexistence can be altered by reciprocal coevolution especially in the case of antagonistic interactions such as predation or parasitism. Here we used an experimental evolution approach to test for the role of initial trait variation in the prey population and coevolutionary history of the predator in the ecological dynamics of a two-species bacterial community predated by a ciliate. We found that initial trait variation both at the bacterial and ciliate level enhanced species coexistence, and that subsequent trait evolutionary trajectories depended on the initial genetic diversity present in the population. Our findings provide further support to the notion that the ecology-centric view of diversity maintenance must be reinvestigated in light of recent findings in the field of eco-evolutionary dynamics.
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Gomulkiewicz, Richard, and Ruth G. Shaw. "Evolutionary rescue beyond the models." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 368, no. 1610 (January 19, 2013): 20120093. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0093.
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Laboratory model systems and mathematical models have shed considerable light on the fundamental properties and processes of evolutionary rescue. But it remains to determine the extent to which these model-based findings can help biologists predict when evolution will fail or succeed in rescuing natural populations that are facing novel conditions that threaten their persistence. In this article, we present a prospectus for transferring our basic understanding of evolutionary rescue to wild and other non-laboratory populations. Current experimental and theoretical results emphasize how the interplay between inheritance processes and absolute fitness in changed environments drive population dynamics and determine prospects of extinction. We discuss the challenge of inferring these elements of the evolutionary rescue process in field and natural settings. Addressing this challenge will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of population persistence that combines processes of evolutionary rescue with developmental and ecological mechanisms.
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Hinnebusch, B. Joseph, Iman Chouikha, and Yi-Cheng Sun. "Ecological Opportunity, Evolution, and the Emergence of Flea-Borne Plague." Infection and Immunity 84, no. 7 (May 9, 2016): 1932–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/iai.00188-16.
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The plague bacillusYersinia pestisis unique among the pathogenicEnterobacteriaceaein utilizing an arthropod-borne transmission route. Transmission by fleabite is a recent evolutionary adaptation that followed the divergence ofY. pestisfrom the closely related food- and waterborne enteric pathogenYersinia pseudotuberculosis. A combination of population genetics, comparative genomics, and investigations ofYersinia-flea interactions have disclosed the important steps in the evolution and emergence ofY. pestisas a flea-borne pathogen. Only a few genetic changes, representing both gene gain by lateral transfer and gene loss by loss-of-function mutation (pseudogenization), were fundamental to this process. The emergence ofY. pestisfits evolutionary theories that emphasize ecological opportunity in adaptive diversification and rapid emergence of new species.
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Visher, Elisa, and Mike Boots. "The problem of mediocre generalists: population genetics and eco-evolutionary perspectives on host breadth evolution in pathogens." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 287, no. 1933 (August 19, 2020): 20201230. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1230.
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Many of our theories for the generation and maintenance of diversity in nature depend on the existence of specialist biotic interactions which, in host–pathogen systems, also shape cross-species disease emergence. As such, niche breadth evolution, especially in host–parasite systems, remains a central focus in ecology and evolution. The predominant explanation for the existence of specialization in the literature is that niche breadth is constrained by trade-offs, such that a generalist is less fit on any particular environment than a given specialist. This trade-off theory has been used to predict niche breadth (co)evolution in both population genetics and eco-evolutionary models, with the different modelling methods providing separate, complementary insights. However, trade-offs may be far from universal, so population genetics theory has also proposed alternate mechanisms for costly generalism, including mutation accumulation. However, these mechanisms have yet to be integrated into eco-evolutionary models in order to understand how the mechanism of costly generalism alters the biological and ecological circumstances predicted to maintain specialism. In this review, we outline how population genetics and eco-evolutionary models based on trade-offs have provided insights for parasite niche breadth evolution and argue that the population genetics-derived mutation accumulation theory needs to be better integrated into eco-evolutionary theory.
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Walsh, Matthew R., John P. DeLong, Torrance C. Hanley, and David M. Post. "A cascade of evolutionary change alters consumer-resource dynamics and ecosystem function." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 279, no. 1741 (May 23, 2012): 3184–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.0496.
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It is becoming increasingly clear that intraspecific evolutionary divergence influences the properties of populations, communities and ecosystems. The different ecological impacts of phenotypes and genotypes may alter selection on many species and promote a cascade of ecological and evolutionary change throughout the food web. Theory predicts that evolutionary interactions across trophic levels may contribute to hypothesized feedbacks between ecology and evolution. However, the importance of ‘cascading evolutionary change’ in a natural setting is unknown. In lakes in Connecticut, USA, variation in migratory behaviour and feeding morphology of a fish predator, the alewife ( Alosa pseudoharengus ), drives life-history evolution in a species of zooplankton prey ( Daphnia ambigua ). Here we evaluated the reciprocal impacts of Daphnia evolution on ecological processes in laboratory mesocosms. We show that life-history evolution in Daphnia facilitates divergence in rates of population growth, which in turn significantly alters consumer-resource dynamics and ecosystem function. These experimental results parallel trends observed in lakes. Such results argue that a cascade of evolutionary change, which has occurred over contemporary timescales, alters community and ecosystem processes.
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Van Bocxlaer, Bert. "Hierarchical structure of ecological and non-ecological processes of differentiation shaped ongoing gastropod radiation in the Malawi Basin." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 284, no. 1862 (September 13, 2017): 20171494. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1494.
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Ecological processes, non-ecological processes or a combination of both may cause reproductive isolation and speciation, but their specific roles and potentially complex interactions in evolutionary radiations remain poorly understood, which defines a central knowledge gap at the interface of microevolution and macroevolution. Here I examine genome scans in combination with phenotypic and environmental data to disentangle how ecological and non-ecological processes contributed to population differentiation and speciation in an ongoing radiation of Lanistes gastropods from the Malawi Basin. I found a remarkable hierarchical structure of differentiation mechanisms in space and time: neutral and mutation-order processes are older and occur mainly between regions, whereas more recent adaptive processes are the main driver of genetic differentiation and reproductive isolation within regions. The strongest differentiation occurs between habitats and between regions, i.e. when ecological and non-ecological processes act synergistically. The structured occurrence of these processes based on the specific geographical setting and ecological opportunities strongly influenced the potential for evolutionary radiation. The results highlight the importance of interactions between various mechanisms of differentiation in evolutionary radiations, and suggest that non-ecological processes are important in adaptive radiations, including those of cichlids. Insight into such interactions is critical to understanding large-scale patterns of organismal diversity.
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Louis, Marie, Michael C. Fontaine, Jérôme Spitz, Erika Schlund, Willy Dabin, Rob Deaville, Florence Caurant, Yves Cherel, Christophe Guinet, and Benoit Simon-Bouhet. "Ecological opportunities and specializations shaped genetic divergence in a highly mobile marine top predator." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281, no. 1795 (November 22, 2014): 20141558. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.1558.
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Environmental conditions can shape genetic and morphological divergence. Release of new habitats during historical environmental changes was a major driver of evolutionary diversification. Here, forces shaping population structure and ecotype differentiation (‘pelagic’ and ‘coastal’) of bottlenose dolphins in the North-east Atlantic were investigated using complementary evolutionary and ecological approaches. Inference of population demographic history using approximate Bayesian computation indicated that coastal populations were likely founded by the Atlantic pelagic population after the Last Glacial Maxima probably as a result of newly available coastal ecological niches. Pelagic dolphins from the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea likely diverged during a period of high productivity in the Mediterranean Sea. Genetic differentiation between coastal and pelagic ecotypes may be maintained by niche specializations, as indicated by stable isotope and stomach content analyses, and social behaviour. The two ecotypes were only weakly morphologically segregated in contrast to other parts of the World Ocean. This may be linked to weak contrasts between coastal and pelagic habitats and/or a relatively recent divergence. We suggest that ecological opportunity to specialize is a major driver of genetic and morphological divergence. Combining genetic, ecological and morphological approaches is essential to understanding the population structure of mobile and cryptic species.
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Adams, Clare I. M., Michael Knapp, Neil J. Gemmell, Gert-Jan Jeunen, Michael Bunce, Miles D. Lamare, and Helen R. Taylor. "Beyond Biodiversity: Can Environmental DNA (eDNA) Cut It as a Population Genetics Tool?" Genes 10, no. 3 (March 1, 2019): 192. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes10030192.
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Population genetic data underpin many studies of behavioral, ecological, and evolutionary processes in wild populations and contribute to effective conservation management. However, collecting genetic samples can be challenging when working with endangered, invasive, or cryptic species. Environmental DNA (eDNA) offers a way to sample genetic material non-invasively without requiring visual observation. While eDNA has been trialed extensively as a biodiversity and biosecurity monitoring tool with a strong taxonomic focus, it has yet to be fully explored as a means for obtaining population genetic information. Here, we review current research that employs eDNA approaches for the study of populations. We outline challenges facing eDNA-based population genetic methodologies, and suggest avenues of research for future developments. We advocate that with further optimizations, this emergent field holds great potential as part of the population genetics toolkit.
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Hauert, Christoph, Miranda Holmes, and Michael Doebeli. "Evolutionary games and population dynamics: maintenance of cooperation in public goods games." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 273, no. 1600 (July 5, 2006): 2565–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2006.3600.
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The emergence and abundance of cooperation in nature poses a tenacious and challenging puzzle to evolutionary biology. Cooperative behaviour seems to contradict Darwinian evolution because altruistic individuals increase the fitness of other members of the population at a cost to themselves. Thus, in the absence of supporting mechanisms, cooperation should decrease and vanish, as predicted by classical models for cooperation in evolutionary game theory, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and public goods games. Traditional approaches to studying the problem of cooperation assume constant population sizes and thus neglect the ecology of the interacting individuals. Here, we incorporate ecological dynamics into evolutionary games and reveal a new mechanism for maintaining cooperation. In public goods games, cooperation can gain a foothold if the population density depends on the average population payoff. Decreasing population densities, due to defection leading to small payoffs, results in smaller interaction group sizes in which cooperation can be favoured. This feedback between ecological dynamics and game dynamics can generate stable coexistence of cooperators and defectors in public goods games. However, this mechanism fails for pairwise Prisoner's Dilemma interactions and the population is driven to extinction. Our model represents natural extension of replicator dynamics to populations of varying densities.
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Klinger, Christie R., Jennifer A. Lau, and Katy D. Heath. "Ecological genomics of mutualism decline in nitrogen-fixing bacteria." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 283, no. 1826 (March 16, 2016): 20152563. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.2563.
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Anthropogenic changes can influence mutualism evolution; however, the genomic regions underpinning mutualism that are most affected by environmental change are generally unknown, even in well-studied model mutualisms like the interaction between legumes and their nitrogen (N)-fixing rhizobia. Such genomic information can shed light on the agents and targets of selection maintaining cooperation in nature. We recently demonstrated that N-fertilization has caused an evolutionary decline in mutualistic partner quality in the rhizobia that form symbiosis with clover. Here, population genomic analyses of N-fertilized versus control rhizobium populations indicate that evolutionary differentiation at a key symbiosis gene region on the symbiotic plasmid (pSym) contributes to partner quality decline. Moreover, patterns of genetic variation at selected loci were consistent with recent positive selection within N-fertilized environments, suggesting that N-rich environments might select for less beneficial rhizobia. By studying the molecular population genomics of a natural bacterial population within a long-term ecological field experiment, we find that: (i) the N environment is indeed a potent selective force mediating mutualism evolution in this symbiosis, (ii) natural variation in rhizobium partner quality is mediated in part by key symbiosis genes on the symbiotic plasmid, and (iii) differentiation at selected genes occurred in the context of otherwise recombining genomes, resembling eukaryotic models of adaptation.
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Kearney, Michael, Stephen J. Simpson, David Raubenheimer, and Brian Helmuth. "Modelling the ecological niche from functional traits." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365, no. 1557 (November 12, 2010): 3469–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0034.
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The niche concept is central to ecology but is often depicted descriptively through observing associations between organisms and habitats. Here, we argue for the importance of mechanistically modelling niches based on functional traits of organisms and explore the possibilities for achieving this through the integration of three theoretical frameworks: biophysical ecology (BE), the geometric framework for nutrition (GF) and dynamic energy budget (DEB) models. These three frameworks are fundamentally based on the conservation laws of thermodynamics, describing energy and mass balance at the level of the individual and capturing the prodigious predictive power of the concepts of ‘homeostasis’ and ‘evolutionary fitness’. BE and the GF provide mechanistic multi-dimensional depictions of climatic and nutritional niches, respectively, providing a foundation for linking organismal traits (morphology, physiology, behaviour) with habitat characteristics. In turn, they provide driving inputs and cost functions for mass/energy allocation within the individual as determined by DEB models. We show how integration of the three frameworks permits calculation of activity constraints, vital rates (survival, development, growth, reproduction) and ultimately population growth rates and species distributions. When integrated with contemporary niche theory, functional trait niche models hold great promise for tackling major questions in ecology and evolutionary biology.
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Ponciano, José Miguel. "A parametric interpretation of Bayesian Nonparametric Inference from Gene Genealogies: Linking ecological, population genetics and evolutionary processes." Theoretical Population Biology 122 (July 2018): 128–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tpb.2017.10.007.
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Parsons, Todd L., Amaury Lambert, Troy Day, and Sylvain Gandon. "Pathogen evolution in finite populations: slow and steady spreads the best." Journal of The Royal Society Interface 15, no. 147 (October 2018): 20180135. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2018.0135.
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The theory of life-history evolution provides a powerful framework to understand the evolutionary dynamics of pathogens. It assumes, however, that host populations are large and that one can neglect the effects of demographic stochasticity. Here, we expand the theory to account for the effects of finite population size on the evolution of pathogen virulence. We show that demographic stochasticity introduces additional evolutionary forces that can qualitatively affect the dynamics and the evolutionary outcome. We discuss the importance of the shape of the pathogen fitness landscape on the balance between mutation, selection and genetic drift. This analysis reconciles Adaptive Dynamics with population genetics in finite populations and provides a new theoretical toolbox to study life-history evolution in realistic ecological scenarios.
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Lee, Kristin M., and Graham Coop. "Population genomics perspectives on convergent adaptation." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 374, no. 1777 (June 3, 2019): 20180236. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2018.0236.
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Convergent adaptation is the independent evolution of similar traits conferring a fitness advantage in two or more lineages. Cases of convergent adaptation inform our ideas about the ecological and molecular basis of adaptation. In judging the degree to which putative cases of convergent adaptation provide an independent replication of the process of adaptation, it is necessary to establish the degree to which the evolutionary change is unexpected under null models and to show that selection has repeatedly, independently driven these changes. Here, we discuss the issues that arise from these questions particularly for closely related populations, where gene flow and standing variation add additional layers of complexity. We outline a conceptual framework to guide intuition as to the extent to which evolutionary change represents the independent gain of information owing to selection and show that this is a measure of how surprised we should be by convergence. Additionally, we summarize the ways population and quantitative genetics and genomics may help us address questions related to convergent adaptation, as well as open new questions and avenues of research. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Convergent evolution in the genomics era: new insights and directions’.
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Burger, Oskar, and John P. DeLong. "What if fertility decline is not permanent? The need for an evolutionarily informed approach to understanding low fertility." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371, no. 1692 (April 19, 2016): 20150157. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0157.
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‘Demographic transition theory’ assumes that fertility decline is irreversible. This commonly held assumption is based on observations of recent and historical reductions in fertility that accompany modernization and declining mortality. The irreversibility assumption, however, is highly suspect from an evolutionary point of view, because demographic traits are at least partially influenced by genetics and are responsive to social and ecological conditions. Nonetheless, an inevitable shift from high mortality and fertility to low mortality and fertility is used as a guiding framework for projecting human population sizes into the future. This paper reviews some theoretical and empirical evidence suggesting that the assumption of irreversibility is ill-founded, at least without considerable development in theory that incorporates evolutionary and ecological processes. We offer general propositions for how fertility could increase in the future, including natural selection on high fertility variants, the difficulty of maintaining universal norms and preferences in a large, diverse and economically differentiated population, and the escalating resource demands of modernization.
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Post, David M., and Eric P. Palkovacs. "Eco-evolutionary feedbacks in community and ecosystem ecology: interactions between the ecological theatre and the evolutionary play." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364, no. 1523 (June 12, 2009): 1629–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0012.
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Interactions between natural selection and environmental change are well recognized and sit at the core of ecology and evolutionary biology. Reciprocal interactions between ecology and evolution, eco-evolutionary feedbacks, are less well studied, even though they may be critical for understanding the evolution of biological diversity, the structure of communities and the function of ecosystems. Eco-evolutionary feedbacks require that populations alter their environment (niche construction) and that those changes in the environment feed back to influence the subsequent evolution of the population. There is strong evidence that organisms influence their environment through predation, nutrient excretion and habitat modification, and that populations evolve in response to changes in their environment at time-scales congruent with ecological change (contemporary evolution). Here, we outline how the niche construction and contemporary evolution interact to alter the direction of evolution and the structure and function of communities and ecosystems. We then present five empirical systems that highlight important characteristics of eco-evolutionary feedbacks: rotifer–algae chemostats; alewife–zooplankton interactions in lakes; guppy life-history evolution and nutrient cycling in streams; avian seed predators and plants; and tree leaf chemistry and soil processes. The alewife–zooplankton system provides the most complete evidence for eco-evolutionary feedbacks, but other systems highlight the potential for eco-evolutionary feedbacks in a wide variety of natural systems.
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Bell, Graham. "Evolutionary rescue and the limits of adaptation." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 368, no. 1610 (January 19, 2013): 20120080. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0080.
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Populations subject to severe stress may be rescued by natural selection, but its operation is restricted by ecological and genetic constraints. The cost of natural selection expresses the limited capacity of a population to sustain the load of mortality or sterility required for effective selection. Genostasis expresses the lack of variation that prevents many populations from adapting to stress. While the role of relative fitness in adaptation is well understood, evolutionary rescue emphasizes the need to recognize explicitly the importance of absolute fitness. Permanent adaptation requires a range of genetic variation in absolute fitness that is broad enough to provide a few extreme types capable of sustained growth under a stress that would cause extinction if they were not present. This principle implies that population size is an important determinant of rescue. The overall number of individuals exposed to selection will be greater when the population declines gradually under a constant stress, or is progressively challenged by gradually increasing stress. In gradually deteriorating environments, survival at lethal stress may be procured by prior adaptation to sublethal stress through genetic correlation. Neither the standing genetic variation of small populations nor the mutation supply of large populations, however, may be sufficient to provide evolutionary rescue for most populations.
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Duke-Sylvester, Scott M., Roman Biek, and Leslie A. Real. "Molecular evolutionary signatures reveal the role of host ecological dynamics in viral disease emergence and spread." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 368, no. 1614 (March 19, 2013): 20120194. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0194.
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RNA viruses account for numerous emerging and perennial infectious diseases, and are characterized by rapid rates of molecular evolution. The ecological dynamics of most emerging RNA viruses are still poorly understood and difficult to ascertain. The availability of genome sequence data for many RNA viruses, in principle, could be used to infer ecological dynamics if changes in population numbers produced a lasting signature within the pattern of genome evolution. As a result, the rapidly emerging phylogeographic structure of a pathogen, shaped by the rise and fall in the number of infections and their spatial distribution, could be used as a surrogate for direct ecological assessments. Based on rabies virus as our example, we use a model combining ecological and evolutionary processes to test whether variation in the rate of host movement results in predictive diagnostic patterns of pathogen genetic structure. We identify several linearizable relationships between host dispersal rate and measures of phylogenetic structure suggesting genetic information can be used to directly infer ecological process. We also find phylogenetic structure may be more revealing than demography for certain ecological processes. Our approach extends the reach of current analytic frameworks for infectious disease dynamics by linking phylogeography back to underlying ecological processes.
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Rodger, Yael S., Alexandra Pavlova, Steve Sinclair, Melinda Pickup, and Paul Sunnucks. "Evolutionary history and genetic connectivity across highly fragmented populations of an endangered daisy." Heredity 126, no. 5 (February 19, 2021): 846–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41437-021-00413-0.
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AbstractConservation management can be aided by knowledge of genetic diversity and evolutionary history, so that ecological and evolutionary processes can be preserved. The Button Wrinklewort daisy (Rutidosis leptorrhynchoides) was a common component of grassy ecosystems in south-eastern Australia. It is now endangered due to extensive habitat loss and the impacts of livestock grazing, and is currently restricted to a few small populations in two regions >500 km apart, one in Victoria, the other in the Australian Capital Territory and nearby New South Wales (ACT/NSW). Using a genome-wide SNP dataset, we assessed patterns of genetic structure and genetic differentiation of 12 natural diploid populations. We estimated intrapopulation genetic diversity to scope sources for genetic management. Bayesian clustering and principal coordinate analyses showed strong population genetic differentiation between the two regions, and substantial substructure within ACT/NSW. A coalescent tree-building approach implemented in SNAPP indicated evolutionary divergence between the two distant regions. Among the populations screened, the last two known remaining Victorian populations had the highest genetic diversity, despite having among the lowest recent census sizes. A maximum likelihood population tree method implemented in TreeMix suggested little or no recent gene flow except potentially between very close neighbours. Populations that were more genetically distinctive had lower genetic diversity, suggesting that drift in isolation is likely driving population differentiation though loss of diversity, hence re-establishing gene flow among them is desirable. These results provide background knowledge for evidence-based conservation and support genetic rescue within and between regions to elevate genetic diversity and alleviate inbreeding.
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Baltazar-Soares, Miguel, Hans-Harald Hinrichsen, and Christophe Eizaguirre. "Integrating population genomics and biophysical models towards evolutionary-based fisheries management." ICES Journal of Marine Science 75, no. 4 (January 6, 2018): 1245–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsx244.
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Abstract Overfishing and rapid environmental shifts pose severe challenges to the resilience and viability of marine fish populations. To develop and implement measures that enhance species’ adaptive potential to cope with those pressures while, at the same time, ensuring sustainable exploitation rates is part of the central goal of fisheries management. Here, we argue that a combination of biophysical modelling and population genomic assessments offer ideal management tools to define stocks, their physical connectivity and ultimately, their short-term adaptive potential. To date, biophysical modelling has often been confined to fisheries ecology whereas evolutionary hypotheses remain rarely considered. When identified, connectivity patterns are seldom explored to understand the evolution and distribution of adaptive genetic variation, a proxy for species’ evolutionary potential. Here, we describe a framework that expands on the conventional seascape genetics approach by using biophysical modelling and population genomics. The goals are to identify connectivity patterns and selective pressures, as well as putative adaptive variants directly responding to the selective pressures and, ultimately, link both to define testable hypotheses over species response to shifting ecological conditions and overexploitation.
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Hiltunen, Teppo, Veijo Kaitala, Jouni Laakso, and Lutz Becks. "Evolutionary contribution to coexistence of competitors in microbial food webs." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 284, no. 1864 (October 11, 2017): 20170415. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.0415.
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The theory of species coexistence is a key concept in ecology that has received much attention. The role of rapid evolution for determining species coexistence is still poorly understood although evolutionary change on ecological time-scales has the potential to change almost any ecological process. The influence of evolution on coexistence can be especially pronounced in microbial communities where organisms often have large population sizes and short generation times. Previous work on coexistence has assumed that traits involved in resource use and species interactions are constant or change very slowly in terms of ecological time-scales. However, recent work suggests that these traits can evolve rapidly. Nevertheless, the importance of rapid evolution to coexistence has not been tested experimentally. Here, we show how rapid evolution alters the frequency of two bacterial competitors over time when grown together with specialist consumers (bacteriophages), a generalist consumer (protozoan) and all in combination. We find that consumers facilitate coexistence in a manner consistent with classic ecological theory. However, through disentangling the relative contributions of ecology (changes in consumer abundance) and evolution (changes in traits mediating species interactions) on the frequency of the two competitors over time, we find differences between the consumer types and combinations. Overall, our results indicate that the influence of evolution on species coexistence strongly depends on the traits and species interactions considered.
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Svanbäck, Richard, and Daniel I. Bolnick. "Intraspecific competition drives increased resource use diversity within a natural population." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 274, no. 1611 (December 19, 2006): 839–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2006.0198.
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Resource competition is thought to play a major role in driving evolutionary diversification. For instance, in ecological character displacement, coexisting species evolve to use different resources, reducing the effects of interspecific competition. It is thought that a similar diversifying effect might occur in response to competition among members of a single species. Individuals may mitigate the effects of intraspecific competition by switching to use alternative resources not used by conspecific competitors. This diversification is the driving force in some models of sympatric speciation, but has not been demonstrated in natural populations. Here, we present experimental evidence confirming that competition drives ecological diversification within natural populations. We manipulated population density of three-spine sticklebacks ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ) in enclosures in a natural lake. Increased population density led to reduced prey availability, causing individuals to add alternative prey types to their diet. Since phenotypically different individuals added different alternative prey, diet variation among individuals increased relative to low-density control enclosures. Competition also increased the diet–morphology correlations, so that the frequency-dependent interactions were stronger in high competition. These results not only confirm that resource competition promotes niche variation within populations, but also show that this increased diversity can arise via behavioural plasticity alone, without the evolutionary changes commonly assumed by theory.
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Hendry, Andrew P., Kiyoko M. Gotanda, and Erik I. Svensson. "Human influences on evolution, and the ecological and societal consequences." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 372, no. 1712 (January 19, 2017): 20160028. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0028.
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Humans have dramatic, diverse and far-reaching influences on the evolution of other organisms. Numerous examples of this human-induced contemporary evolution have been reported in a number of ‘contexts’, including hunting, harvesting, fishing, agriculture, medicine, climate change, pollution, eutrophication, urbanization, habitat fragmentation, biological invasions and emerging/disappearing diseases. Although numerous papers, journal special issues and books have addressed each of these contexts individually, the time has come to consider them together and thereby seek important similarities and differences. The goal of this special issue, and this introductory paper, is to promote and expand this nascent integration. We first develop predictions as to which human contexts might cause the strongest and most consistent directional selection, the greatest changes in evolutionary potential, the greatest genetic (as opposed to plastic) changes and the greatest effects on evolutionary diversification . We then develop predictions as to the contexts where human-induced evolutionary changes might have the strongest effects on the population dynamics of the focal evolving species, the structure of their communities, the functions of their ecosystems and the benefits and costs for human societies. These qualitative predictions are intended as a rallying point for broader and more detailed future discussions of how human influences shape evolution, and how that evolution then influences species traits, biodiversity, ecosystems and humans. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Human influences on evolution, and the ecological and societal consequences’.
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Wolf, Jason B., and Michael J. Wade. "What are maternal effects (and what are they not)?" Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364, no. 1520 (March 12, 2009): 1107–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0238.
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Maternal effects can play an important role in a diversity of ecological and evolutionary processes such as population dynamics, phenotypic plasticity, niche construction, life-history evolution and the evolutionary response to selection. However, although maternal effects were defined by quantitative geneticists well over half a century ago, there remains some confusion over exactly what phenomena should be characterized as maternal effects and, more importantly, why it matters and how they are defined. We suggest a definition of maternal effects as the causal influence of the maternal genotype or phenotype on the offspring phenotype. This definition differs from some definitions in that it treats maternal effects as a phenomenon, not as a statistical construct. The causal link to maternal genotype or phenotype is the critical component of this definition providing the link between maternal effects and evolutionary and ecological processes. We show why phenomena such as maternal cytoplasmic inheritance and genomic imprinting are distinct genetically from and have different evolutionary consequences than true maternal effects. We also argue that one should consider cases where the maternal effect is conditional on offspring genotype as a class of maternal effects.
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Artemenkov, Aleksey A. "Disadaptive genetic-evolutionary processes in human populations of industrial cities." I.P. Pavlov Russian Medical Biological Herald 28, no. 2 (July 3, 2020): 234–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.23888/pavlovj2020282234-248.
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Aim. Generalization of literature and proprietary data on genetic-physiological and evolutionary processes occurring in human populations in environmentally neglected industrial cities.
In the review information is given about damage to the genetic apparatus of cells of a human organism under influence of unfavorable environmental factors and disadaptations of different genesis. To denote the totality of alterations induced by the given exposure, a new term is introduced genetics of disadaptations. The information of mutagenic factors of the environment of industrial cities associated with growth of oncological diseases and of malformations resulting from chromosomal aberrations in cells is generalized. The problem of genetic burden of human populations in environmentally neglected territories and of the influence of disadaptive factors on this process is discussed. Information of the ecological situation and morbidity of the population in Cherepovets industrial city is given. A role of disadaptations in genetic-evolutionary processes occurring in human populations is shown. The cause of different manifestations of disadaptation in the population is stated to be divergence of traits. A hypothesis is proposed and evidences are given in favor of the existence of natural selection for a disadaptive trait in human populations. It is suggested that being accumulated in a human organism, disadaptive disorders may be transmitted to the next generations reducing vital ability of organisms and inducing different diseases.
Conclusion. Within the topic, examples of different prophylactic measures for improving the health of the population of industrial cities are given to prevent unfavorable alterations of human genome under the influence of unfavorable ecological and related disadaptive factors.
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Gandon, S., M. E. Hochberg, R. D. Holt, and T. Day. "What limits the evolutionary emergence of pathogens?" Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 368, no. 1610 (January 19, 2013): 20120086. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0086.
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The ability of a pathogen to cause an epidemic when introduced in a new host population often relies on its ability to adapt to this new environment. Here, we give a brief overview of recent theoretical and empirical studies of such evolutionary emergence of pathogens. We discuss the effects of several ecological and genetic factors that may affect the likelihood of emergence: migration, life history of the infectious agent, host heterogeneity, and the rate and effects of mutations. We contrast different modelling approaches and indicate how details in the way we model each step of a life cycle can have important consequences on the predicted probability of evolutionary emergence. These different theoretical perspectives yield important insights into optimal surveillance and intervention strategies, which should aim for a reduction in the emergence (and re-emergence) of infectious diseases.
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Morris, Douglas W. "Adaptation and habitat selection in the eco-evolutionary process." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 278, no. 1717 (May 25, 2011): 2401–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.0604.
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The struggle for existence occurs through the vital rates of population growth. This basic fact demonstrates the tight connection between ecology and evolution that defines the emerging field of eco-evolutionary dynamics. An effective synthesis of the interdependencies between ecology and evolution is grounded in six principles. The mechanics of evolution specifies the origin and rules governing traits and evolutionary strategies. Traits and evolutionary strategies achieve their selective value through their functional relationships with fitness. Function depends on the underlying structure of variation and the temporal, spatial and organizational scales of evolution. An understanding of how changes in traits and strategies occur requires conjoining ecological and evolutionary dynamics. Adaptation merges these five pillars to achieve a comprehensive understanding of ecological and evolutionary change. I demonstrate the value of this world-view with reference to the theory and practice of habitat selection. The theory allows us to assess evolutionarily stable strategies and states of habitat selection, and to draw the adaptive landscapes for habitat-selecting species. The landscapes can then be used to forecast future evolution under a variety of climate change and other scenarios.
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Pointer, Michael D., Matthew J. G. Gage, and Lewis G. Spurgin. "Tribolium beetles as a model system in evolution and ecology." Heredity 126, no. 6 (March 25, 2021): 869–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41437-021-00420-1.
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AbstractFlour beetles of the genus Tribolium have been utilised as informative study systems for over a century and contributed to major advances across many fields. This review serves to highlight the significant historical contribution that Tribolium study systems have made to the fields of ecology and evolution, and to promote their use as contemporary research models. We review the broad range of studies employing Tribolium to make significant advances in ecology and evolution. We show that research using Tribolium beetles has contributed a substantial amount to evolutionary and ecological understanding, especially in the fields of population dynamics, reproduction and sexual selection, population and quantitative genetics, and behaviour, physiology and life history. We propose a number of future research opportunities using Tribolium, with particular focus on how their amenability to forward and reverse genetic manipulation may provide a valuable complement to other insect models.
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Abondio, Paolo, Marco Sazzini, Paolo Garagnani, Alessio Boattini, Daniela Monti, Claudio Franceschi, Donata Luiselli, and Cristina Giuliani. "The Genetic Variability of APOE in Different Human Populations and Its Implications for Longevity." Genes 10, no. 3 (March 15, 2019): 222. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes10030222.
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Human longevity is a complex phenotype resulting from the combinations of context-dependent gene-environment interactions that require analysis as a dynamic process in a cohesive ecological and evolutionary framework. Genome-wide association (GWAS) and whole-genome sequencing (WGS) studies on centenarians pointed toward the inclusion of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) polymorphisms ε2 and ε4, as implicated in the attainment of extreme longevity, which refers to their effect in age-related Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). In this case, the available literature on APOE and its involvement in longevity is described according to an anthropological and population genetics perspective. This aims to highlight the evolutionary history of this gene, how its participation in several biological pathways relates to human longevity, and which evolutionary dynamics may have shaped the distribution of APOE haplotypes across the globe. Its potential adaptive role will be described along with implications for the study of longevity in different human groups. This review also presents an updated overview of the worldwide distribution of APOE alleles based on modern day data from public databases and ancient DNA samples retrieved from literature in the attempt to understand the spatial and temporal frame in which present-day patterns of APOE variation evolved.
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Ziehe, Martin, and Lloyd Demetrius. "Directionality theory: an empirical study of an entropic principle in life‐history evolution." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 272, no. 1568 (May 27, 2005): 1185–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2004.3032.
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Understanding the relationship between ecological constraints and life-history properties constitutes a central problem in evolutionary ecology. Directionality theory, a model of the evolutionary process based on demographic entropy, a measure of the uncertainty in the age of the mother of a randomly chosen newborn, provides an analytical framework for addressing this problem. The theory predicts that in populations that spend the greater part of their evolutionary history in the stationary growth phase (equilibrium species), entropy will increase. Equilibrium species will be characterized by high iteroparity and strong demographic stability. In populations that spend the greater part of their evolutionary history in the exponential growth phase (opportunistic species), entropy will decrease when population size is large, and will undergo random variation when population size is small. Opportunistic species will be characterized by weak iteroparity and weak demographic stability when population size is large, and random variations in these attributes when population size is small. This paper assesses the validity of these predictions by employing a demographic dataset of 66 species of perennial plants. This empirical analysis is consistent with directionality theory and provides support for its significance as an explanatory and predictive model of life-history evolution.
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de Andreazzi, Cecilia Siliansky, Paulo R. Guimarães, and Carlos J. Melián. "Eco-evolutionary feedbacks promote fluctuating selection and long-term stability of antagonistic networks." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 285, no. 1874 (March 14, 2018): 20172596. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2596.
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Studies have shown the potential for rapid adaptation in coevolving populations and that the structure of species interaction networks can modulate the vulnerability of ecological systems to perturbations. Although the feedback loop between population dynamics and coevolution of traits is crucial for understanding long-term stability in ecological assemblages, modelling eco-evolutionary dynamics in species-rich assemblages is still a challenge. We explore how eco-evolutionary feedbacks influence trait evolution and species abundances in 23 empirical antagonistic networks. We show that, if selection due to antagonistic interactions is stronger than other selective pressures, eco-evolutionary feedbacks lead to higher mean species abundances and lower temporal variation in abundances. By contrast, strong selection of antagonistic interactions leads to higher temporal variation of traits and on interaction strengths. Our results present a theoretical link between the study of the species persistence and coevolution in networks of interacting species, pointing out the ways by which coevolution may decrease the vulnerability of species within antagonistic networks to demographic fluctuation.
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Tarasjev, A., S. Avramov, and Danijela Miljkovic. "Evolutionary biology studies on the Iris pumila clonal plant: Advantages of a good model system, main findings and directions for further research." Archives of Biological Sciences 64, no. 1 (2012): 159–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/abs1201159t.
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Evolutionary studies on the dwarf bearded iris, Iris pumila L., a perennial clonal monocot with hermaphroditic enthomophylous flowers, have been conducted during the last three decades on plants and populations from the Deliblato Sands in Serbia. In this review we discuss the main advantages of this model system that have enabled various studies of several important genetic, ecological, and evolutionary issues at different levels of biological organization (molecular, physiological, anatomical, morphological and population). Based on published research and its resonance in international scientific literature, we present the main findings obtained from these studies, and discuss possible directions for further research.
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Campeau, Winston, Andrew M. Simons, and Brett Stevens. "The evolutionary maintenance of Lévy flight foraging." PLOS Computational Biology 18, no. 1 (January 18, 2022): e1009490. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009490.
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Lévy flight is a type of random walk that characterizes the behaviour of many natural phenomena studied across a multiplicity of academic disciplines; within biology specifically, the behaviour of fish, birds, insects, mollusks, bacteria, plants, slime molds, t-cells, and human populations. The Lévy flight foraging hypothesis states that because Lévy flights can maximize an organism’s search efficiency, natural selection should result in Lévy-like behaviour. Empirical and theoretical research has provided ample evidence of Lévy walks in both extinct and extant species, and its efficiency across models with a diversity of resource distributions. However, no model has addressed the maintenance of Lévy flight foraging through evolutionary processes, and existing models lack ecological breadth. We use numerical simulations, including lineage-based models of evolution with a distribution of move lengths as a variable and heritable trait, to test the Lévy flight foraging hypothesis. We include biological and ecological contexts such as population size, searching costs, lifespan, resource distribution, speed, and consider both energy accumulated at the end of a lifespan and averaged over a lifespan. We demonstrate that selection often results in Lévy-like behaviour, although conditional; smaller populations, longer searches, and low searching costs increase the fitness of Lévy-like behaviour relative to Brownian behaviour. Interestingly, our results also evidence a bet-hedging strategy; Lévy-like behaviour reduces fitness variance, thus maximizing geometric mean fitness over multiple generations.
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Cohen, Yosef. "Evolutionary distributions in adaptive space." Journal of Applied Mathematics 2005, no. 4 (2005): 403–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/jam.2005.403.
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An evolutionary distribution (ED), denoted byz(x,t), is a distribution of density of phenotypes over a set of adaptive traitsx. Herexis ann-dimensional vector that represents the adaptive space. Evolutionary interactions among phenotypes occur within an ED and between EDs. A generic approach to modeling systems of ED is developed. With it, two cases are analyzed. (1) A predator prey inter-ED interactions either with no intra-ED interactions or with cannibalism and competition (both intra-ED interactions). A predator prey system with no intra-ED interactions is stable. Cannibalism destabilizes it and competition strengthens its stability. (2) Mixed interactions (where phenotypes of one ED both benefit and are harmed by phenotypes of another ED) produce complete separation of phenotypes on one ED from the other along the adaptive trait. Foundational definitions of ED, adaptive space, and so on are also given. We argue that in evolutionary context, predator prey models with predator saturation make less sense than in ecological models. Also, with ED, the dynamics of population genetics may be reduced to an algebraic problem. Finally, extensions to the theory are proposed.
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Phillips, Ryan D., Renate Faast, Colin C. Bower, Graham R. Brown, and Rod Peakall. "Implications of pollination by food and sexual deception for pollinator specificity, fruit set, population genetics and conservation of Caladenia (Orchidaceae)." Australian Journal of Botany 57, no. 4 (2009): 287. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/bt08154.
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Caladenia is very unusual in that it contains species that attract pollinators by two different strategies, food and sexual deception. Among the sexually deceptive species, baiting for pollinators has shown that within populations orchid species are typically pollinated by a single species of thynnine wasp. However, some wasp species can be pollinators of more than one species of orchid usually when their ranges do not overlap. There is a trend for closely related orchids to exploit wasps from the same genus, with different lineages of orchids often pollinated by different genera. Very little is known about pollination of food-deceptive Caladenia species, although it is evident they attract a suite of generalist food-seeking insects. Food-deceptive species have a higher pollination rate than do sexually deceptive species. Studies of population genetics and pollen movements are few, although they suggest a pattern of fine-scale genetic structuring within populations, owing to predominantly restricted seed dispersal and low genetic differentiation among populations as a consequence of rare long-distance seed-dispersal events. Both evolutionary and ecological research of Caladenia will greatly benefit from a better understanding of the insect species involved in pollination, their ecological requirements and the ecological and genetic consequences of food and sexual deception.
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Holman, Luke, and Hanna Kokko. "The consequences of polyandry for population viability, extinction risk and conservation." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 368, no. 1613 (March 5, 2013): 20120053. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0053.
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Polyandry, by elevating sexual conflict and selecting for reduced male care relative to monandry, may exacerbate the cost of sex and thereby seriously impact population fitness. On the other hand, polyandry has a number of possible population-level benefits over monandry, such as increased sexual selection leading to faster adaptation and a reduced mutation load. Here, we review existing information on how female fitness evolves under polyandry and how this influences population dynamics. In balance, it is far from clear whether polyandry has a net positive or negative effect on female fitness, but we also stress that its effects on individuals may not have visible demographic consequences. In populations that produce many more offspring than can possibly survive and breed, offspring gained or lost as a result of polyandry may not affect population size. Such ecological ‘masking’ of changes in population fitness could hide a response that only manifests under adverse environmental conditions (e.g. anthropogenic change). Surprisingly few studies have attempted to link mating system variation to population dynamics, and in general we urge researchers to consider the ecological consequences of evolutionary processes.
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Okamoto, Kenichi W., and Priyanga Amarasekare. "A framework for high‐throughput eco‐evolutionary simulations integrating multilocus forward‐time population genetics and community ecology." Methods in Ecology and Evolution 9, no. 3 (October 12, 2017): 525–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.12889.
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Eshelman, Christal M., Roxanne Vouk, Jodi L. Stewart, Elizabeth Halsne, Haley A. Lindsey, Stacy Schneider, Miliyard Gualu, Antony M. Dean, and Benjamin Kerr. "Unrestricted migration favours virulent pathogens in experimental metapopulations: evolutionary genetics of a rapacious life history." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365, no. 1552 (August 27, 2010): 2503–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0066.
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Understanding pathogen infectivity and virulence requires combining insights from epidemiology, ecology, evolution and genetics. Although theoretical work in these fields has identified population structure as important for pathogen life-history evolution, experimental tests are scarce. Here, we explore the impact of population structure on life-history evolution in phage T4, a viral pathogen of Escherichia coli . The host–pathogen system is propagated as a metapopulation in which migration between subpopulations is either spatially restricted or unrestricted. Restricted migration favours pathogens with low infectivity and low virulence. Unrestricted migration favours pathogens that enter and exit their hosts quickly, although they are less productive owing to rapid extirpation of the host population. The rise of such ‘rapacious’ phage produces a ‘tragedy of the commons’, in which better competitors lower productivity. We have now identified a genetic basis for a rapacious life history. Mutations at a single locus ( rI ) cause increased virulence and are sufficient to account for a negative relationship between phage competitive ability and productivity. A higher frequency of rI mutants under unrestricted migration signifies the evolution of rapaciousness in this treatment. Conversely, spatially restricted migration favours a more ‘prudent’ pathogen strategy, in which the tragedy of the commons is averted. As our results illustrate, profound epidemiological and ecological consequences of life-history evolution in a pathogen can have a simple genetic cause.
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Forrest, Jessica, and Abraham J. Miller-Rushing. "Toward a synthetic understanding of the role of phenology in ecology and evolution." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365, no. 1555 (October 12, 2010): 3101–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0145.
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Phenology affects nearly all aspects of ecology and evolution. Virtually all biological phenomena—from individual physiology to interspecific relationships to global nutrient fluxes—have annual cycles and are influenced by the timing of abiotic events. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in this topic, as an increasing number of studies document phenological responses to climate change. Much recent research has addressed the genetic controls on phenology, modelling techniques and ecosystem-level and evolutionary consequences of phenological change. To date, however, these efforts have tended to proceed independently. Here, we bring together some of these disparate lines of inquiry to clarify vocabulary, facilitate comparisons among habitat types and promote the integration of ideas and methodologies across different disciplines and scales. We discuss the relationship between phenology and life history, the distinction between organismal- and population-level perspectives on phenology and the influence of phenology on evolutionary processes, communities and ecosystems. Future work should focus on linking ecological and physiological aspects of phenology, understanding the demographic effects of phenological change and explicitly accounting for seasonality and phenology in forecasts of ecological and evolutionary responses to climate change.