scholarly journals Regional neutrality evolves through local adaptive niche evolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew A. Leibold ◽  
Mark C. Urban ◽  
Luc De Meester ◽  
Christopher A. Klausmeier ◽  
Joost Vanoverbeke

AbstractJoost Vanoverbeke, Department of Biology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. Abstract: Biodiversity in natural systems can be maintained either because niche differentiation among competitors facilitates stable coexistence or because equal fitness among neutral species allows for their long-term co-occurrence despite a slow drift toward extinction. Whereas the relative importance of these two ecological mechanisms has been well-studied in the absence of evolution, the role of local adaptive evolution in maintaining biological diversity through these processes is less clear. Here we study the contribution of local adaptive evolution to coexistence in a landscape of interconnected patches subject to disturbance. Under these conditions, early colonists to empty patches following disturbance can often adapt to novel local conditions sufficiently fast to prevent successful colonization by other pre-adapted species. Over the long term, the iteration of these local-scale priority effects results in niche convergence of species at the regional scale even though species tend to monopolize local patches. Thus, the dynamics evolve from stable coexistence through niche differentiation to neutral co-occurrence at the landscape level while still maintaining strong local niche differentiation. Our model results show that neutrality can emerge at the regional scale from local, niche-based adaptive evolution, potentially resolving why ecologists often observe neutral distribution patterns at the landscape level despite strong niche divergence among local communities. Our results also demonstrate how local adaptive evolution can shape cryptic eco-evolutionary dynamics and thus alter the regional mechanisms that determine biological diversity and resistance to disturbance.

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (7) ◽  
pp. 2612-2617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew A. Leibold ◽  
Mark C. Urban ◽  
Luc De Meester ◽  
Christopher A. Klausmeier ◽  
Joost Vanoverbeke

Biodiversity in natural systems can be maintained either because niche differentiation among competitors facilitates stable coexistence or because equal fitness among neutral species allows for their long-term cooccurrence despite a slow drift toward extinction. Whereas the relative importance of these two ecological mechanisms has been well-studied in the absence of evolution, the role of local adaptive evolution in maintaining biological diversity through these processes is less clear. Here we study the contribution of local adaptive evolution to coexistence in a landscape of interconnected patches subject to disturbance. Under these conditions, early colonists to empty patches may adapt to local conditions sufficiently fast to prevent successful colonization by other preadapted species. Over the long term, the iteration of these local-scale priority effects results in niche convergence of species at the regional scale even though species tend to monopolize local patches. Thus, the dynamics evolve from stable coexistence through niche differentiation to neutral cooccurrence at the landscape level while still maintaining strong local niche segregation. Our results show that neutrality can emerge at the regional scale from local, niche-based adaptive evolution, potentially resolving why ecologists often observe neutral distribution patterns at the landscape level despite strong niche divergence among local communities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Shackell ◽  
David M. Keith ◽  
Heike K. Lotze

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity was established in 1993. Canada is a signatory nation that has adopted, and exceeded, the UN Aichi biodiversity target to protect 10% of coastal and marine areas through marine protected areas or “other effective area-based conservation measures” (OECMs) by 2020. However, the science of OECMs as contributors to biodiversity conservation is relatively young and their definition and efficacy testing continue to evolve. Here, we examine whether areas closed to fishing on the Scotian Shelf in Atlantic Canada, where the groundfish community had collapsed in the early 1990s, have the potential to serve as OECMs for groundfish recovery. Using long-term research survey data, we show that three long-term area-based fishing fleet closures did not enhance per capita population growth rates of the majority of 24 common groundfish species. At a regional scale, 10 out of 24 species are currently at less than 50% of their pre-collapse (1979–1992) biomass, reflecting a sustained diminished productivity, even though fishing mortality has been drastically reduced through a moratorium in 1993. Additional measures are needed to protect severely depleted groundfish, especially when the causes of continued diminished productivity are still largely unresolved. The importance of OECMs as a risk-averse approach toward sustainability is globally accepted and they can be considered a tool toward the overarching UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-14). Our study provides further impetus toward articulating the criteria of OECMs and improving their design, monitoring, and testing, while placing OECMs within the broader context of sustainable ecosystem-based management.


Author(s):  
Andrew P. Hendry

This chapter outlines how to conceptualize and predict adaptive evolution based on information about selection and genetic variation. It introduces and explains adaptive landscapes, a concept that has proven useful in guiding the understanding of evolution. The chapter also reviews empirical data to answer fundamental questions about adaptation in nature, including to what extent short- and long-term evolution is predictable, how fast is phenotypic change, to what extent is adaptation constrained by genetic variation, and how well adapted natural populations are to their local environments. Moving beyond selection and adaptation within populations, the chapter shows how eco-evolutionary dynamics will be shaped by biological diversity: that is, different populations and species have different effects on their environment.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christos Josephides ◽  
Peter S. Swain

Competition for substrates is a ubiquitous selection pressure faced by microbes, yet intracellular trade-offs can prevent cells from metabolizing every type of available substrate. Adaptive evolution is constrained by these trade-offs, but their consequences for the repeatability and predictability of evolution are unclear. Here we develop an eco-evolutionary model with a metabolic trade-off to generate networks of mutational paths in microbial communities and show that these networks have descriptive and predictive information about the evolving communities. We find that long-term outcomes, including community collapse, diversity, and cycling, have characteristic evolutionary dynamics that determine the entropy, or repeatability, of mutational paths. Although reliable prediction of evolutionary outcomes from environmental conditions is difficult, graph-theoretic properties of the mutational networks enable accurate prediction even from incomplete observations. In conclusion, we present a novel methodology for analyzing adaptive evolution and report that the dynamics of adaptation are a key variable for predictive success.


2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Alcaide ◽  
M. P. Rabadán ◽  
M. Juárez ◽  
P. Gómez

Mixed viral infections are common in plants, and the evolutionary dynamics of viral populations may differ depending on whether the infection is caused by single or multiple viral strains. However, comparative studies of single and mixed infections using viral populations in comparable agricultural and geographical locations are lacking. Here, we monitored the occurrence of pepino mosaic virus (PepMV) in tomato crops in two major tomato-producing areas in Murcia (southeastern Spain), supporting evidence showing that PepMV disease-affected plants had single infections of the Chilean 2 (CH2) strain in one area and the other area exhibited long-term (13 years) coexistence of the CH2 and European (EU) strains. We hypothesized that circulating strains of PepMV might be modulating the differentiation between them and shaping the evolutionary dynamics of PepMV populations. Our phylogenetic analysis of 106 CH2 isolates randomly selected from both areas showed a remarkable divergence between the CH2 isolates, with increased nucleotide variability in the geographical area where both strains cocirculate. Furthermore, the potential virus–virus interaction was studied further by constructing six full-length infectious CH2 clones from both areas, and assessing their viral fitness in the presence and absence of an EU-type isolate. All CH2 clones showed decreased fitness in mixed infections and although complete genome sequencing indicated a nucleotide divergence of those CH2 clones by area, the magnitude of the fitness response was irrespective of the CH2 origin. Overall, these results suggest that although agroecological cropping practices may be particularly important for explaining the evolutionary dynamics of PepMV in tomato crops, the cocirculation of both strains may have implications on the genetic variability of PepMV populations.


Axioms ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Fasma Diele ◽  
Carmela Marangi ◽  
Angela Martiradonna

Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) is one of the key indicators of land degradation. SOC positively affects soil functions with regard to habitats, biological diversity and soil fertility; therefore, a reduction in the SOC stock of soil results in degradation, and it may also have potential negative effects on soil-derived ecosystem services. Dynamical models, such as the Rothamsted Carbon (RothC) model, may predict the long-term behaviour of soil carbon content and may suggest optimal land use patterns suitable for the achievement of land degradation neutrality as measured in terms of the SOC indicator. In this paper, we compared continuous and discrete versions of the RothC model, especially to achieve long-term solutions. The original discrete formulation of the RothC model was then compared with a novel non-standard integrator that represents an alternative to the exponential Rosenbrock–Euler approach in the literature.


2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (18) ◽  
pp. 5036-5040 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manabu Sakamoto ◽  
Michael J. Benton ◽  
Chris Venditti

Whether dinosaurs were in a long-term decline or whether they were reigning strong right up to their final disappearance at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event 66 Mya has been debated for decades with no clear resolution. The dispute has continued unresolved because of a lack of statistical rigor and appropriate evolutionary framework. Here, for the first time to our knowledge, we apply a Bayesian phylogenetic approach to model the evolutionary dynamics of speciation and extinction through time in Mesozoic dinosaurs, properly taking account of previously ignored statistical violations. We find overwhelming support for a long-term decline across all dinosaurs and within all three dinosaurian subclades (Ornithischia, Sauropodomorpha, and Theropoda), where speciation rate slowed down through time and was ultimately exceeded by extinction rate tens of millions of years before the K-Pg boundary. The only exceptions to this general pattern are the morphologically specialized herbivores, the Hadrosauriformes and Ceratopsidae, which show rapid species proliferations throughout the Late Cretaceous instead. Our results highlight that, despite some heterogeneity in speciation dynamics, dinosaurs showed a marked reduction in their ability to replace extinct species with new ones, making them vulnerable to extinction and unable to respond quickly to and recover from the final catastrophic event.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth‐Anne Sandaa ◽  
Marius R. Saltvedt ◽  
Håkon Dahle ◽  
Haina Wang ◽  
Selina Våge ◽  
...  

2013 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 681-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia M. Jones

Abstract The importance of estuarine seagrass beds as nurseries for juvenile fish has become a universal paradigm, especially for estuaries that are as important as the Chesapeake Bay. Yet, scientific tests of this hypothesis were equivocal depending on species, location, and metrics. Moreover, seagrasses themselves are under threat and one-third of seagrasses have disappeared worldwide with 65% of their losses occurring in estuaries. Although there have been extensive studies of seagrasses in the Chesapeake Bay, surprisingly few studies have quantified the relationship between seagrass as nurseries for finfish in the Bay. Of the few studies that have directly evaluated the use of seagrass nurseries, most have concentrated on single species or were of short duration. Few landscape-level or long-term studies have examined this relationship in the Bay or explored the potential effect of climate change. This review paper summarizes the seagrass habitat value as nurseries and presents recent juvenile fish studies that address the dearth of research at the long term and landscape level with an emphasis on the Chesapeake Bay. An important conclusion upon the review of these studies is that predicting the effects of climate change on fishery production remains uncertain.


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