Does rapid evolution matter? Measuring the rate of contemporary evolution and its impacts on ecological dynamics

Abstract

Rapid contemporary evolution due to natural selection is common in the wild, but it remains uncertain whether its effects are an essential component of community and ecosystem structure and function. Previously we showed how to partition change in a population, community or ecosystem property into contributions from environmental and trait change, when trait change is entirely caused by evolution (Hairston et al. 2005). However, when substantial non-heritable trait change occurs (e.g. due to phenotypic plasticity or change in population structure) that approach can mis-estimate both contributions. Here, we demonstrate how to disentangle ecological impacts of evolution vs. non-heritable trait change by combining our previous approach with the Price Equation. This yields a three-way partitioning into effects of evolution, non-heritable phenotypic change and environment. We extend the approach to cases where ecological consequences of trait change are mediated through interspecific interactions. We analyse empirical examples involving fish, birds and zooplankton, finding that the proportional contribution of rapid evolution varies widely (even among different ecological properties affected by the same trait), and that rapid evolution can be important when it acts to oppose and mitigate phenotypic effects of environmental change. Paradoxically, rapid evolution may be most important when it is least evident.

Assessing triclosan-induced ecological and trans-generational effects in natural phytoplankton communities: a trait-based field method

“…Although evolutionary responses have been commonly ignored in ERA and ecosystem science in general, there is no a priori reason to assume that effects at any scale are unimportant, and our study supports this view. Our data show that, similarly to what observed in other disciplines (Ozgul et al 2009;Svanbäck et al 2009;Collins 2011;Ellner et al 2011), in ecotoxicology the contribution of physiological, evolutionary and ecological processes should be studied together to understand impacts of environmental stressors on complex biological systems. Overall, rapid changes in some traits and their variance within populations were stimulated by TCS dosing, others were inhibited.…”

“…One common misconception is that evolutionary processes act on long temporal scales. On the contrary, rapid contemporary evolution can be widespread, in particular in response to anthropogenic environmental change (Seehausen et al 1997;Olsen et al 2004;Ellner et al 2011;Vonlanthen et al 2012).…”

“…Ecology and evolution are tightly interconnected: ecological dynamics determine natural selection pressures and gradients (Svanbäck et al 2009;Collins 2011;Vonlanthen et al 2012), and evolutionary dynamics shape natural ecological settings and community dynamics (Harmon et al 2009;Ellner et al 2011). One common misconception is that evolutionary processes act on long temporal scales.…”

Evolution mediates the effects of apex predation on aquatic food webs

“…Ecologists increasingly recognize the value of understanding evolutionary as well as ecological factors underlying community dynamics [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. Evolutionary differentiation has been shown to alter pairwise species interactions [13], communities [14][15][16][17] and ecosystems [16,[18][19][20].…”

Adaptive genetic variation mediates bottom-up and top-down control in an aquatic ecosystem

“…Emerging interest in eco-evolutionary dynamics has resulted in a growing number of studies documenting the ways by which evolution can influence population dynamics [1][2][3], community assembly [4][5][6][7] and ecosystem function [8]. A critical component of the eco-evolutionary framework is to determine how phenotypic variation from local adaptation affects the way individuals and populations interact with their biotic and abiotic environment [5].…”