Environmental Stress as an Evolutionary Force

Hoffmann, Ary A.; Hercus, Miriam J.

doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2000)050[0217:esaaef]2.3.co;2

Cited by 331 publications

(252 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Another avenue of research that may well prove fruitful is to investigate the role of environmental stress on influencing the magnitude and direction of HFCs detected with microsatellites. Stress, such as periods of low food availability, high predation or increased environmental disturbance, is a key factor in reducing the fitness of populations, and individuals will vary in their response to stress (Hoffmann & Hercus 2000). This can result in an increase in genetic variance at the population level, for example due to the expression of genetic variance that was neutral under normal environmental conditions (Badyaev 2005).…”

Section: Does Demographic History Influence the Strength Of Hfcs?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A quantitative review of heterozygosity–fitness correlations in animal populations

et al. 2009

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The ease of obtaining genotypic data from wild populations has renewed interest in the relationship between individual genetic diversity and fitness-related traits (heterozygosityfitness correlations, or HFC). Here we present a comprehensive meta-analysis of HFC studies using powerful multivariate techniques which account for nonindependence of data. We comparethesefindingswiththosefromunivariatetechniques,andtesttheinfluenceofarange of factors hypothesized to influence the strength of HFCs. We found small but significantly positive effect sizes for life-history, morphological, and physiological traits; while theory predicts higher mean effect sizes for life-history traits, effect size did not differ consistently with trait type. Newly proposed measures of variation were no more powerful at detecting relationships than multilocus heterozygosity, and populations predicted to have elevated inbreeding variance did not exhibit higher mean effect sizes. Finally, we found evidence for publication bias, with studies reporting weak, nonsignificant effects being under-represented in the literature. In general, our review shows that HFC studies do not generally reveal patterns predicted by population genetic theory, and are of small effect (less than 1% of the variancein phenotypic characters explained). Future studies should use more genetic marker dataandutilizesamplingdesignsthatshedmorelightonthebiologicalmechanismsthatmay modulate the strength of association, for example by contrasting the strength of HFCs in mainlandandislandpopulationsofthesamespecies,investigatingtheroleofenvironmental stress, or by considering how selection has shaped the traits under investigation.

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Section: Does Demographic History Influence the Strength Of Hfcs?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A quantitative review of heterozygosity–fitness correlations in animal populations

et al. 2009

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“…As large numbers of niches are vacated, in conjunction with a splitting off of disjunct populations through habitat fragmentation, there may well be an outburst of speciation, even of adaptive radiation, albeit not remotely on a scale to match the extinction spasm (34)(35)(36). It is unlikely that speciation will be evenly distributed among surviving lineages; it may be concentrated among particular clades or ecological types that thrive in human-dominated ecosystems (37,38)?…”

Section: The Core Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

The biotic crisis and the future of evolution

Myers

Knoll

2001

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

268

142

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The biotic crisis overtaking our planet is likely to precipitate a major extinction of species. That much is well known. Not so well known but probably more significant in the long term is that the crisis will surely disrupt and deplete certain basic processes of evolution, with consequences likely to persist for millions of years. Distinctive features of future evolution could include a homogenization of biotas, a proliferation of opportunistic species, a pest-and-weed ecology, an outburst of speciation among taxa that prosper in human-dominated ecosystems, a decline of biodisparity, an end to the speciation of large vertebrates, the depletion of ''evolutionary powerhouses'' in the tropics, and unpredictable emergent novelties. Despite this likelihood, we have only a rudimentary understanding of how we are altering the evolutionary future. As a result of our ignorance, conservation policies fail to reflect longterm evolutionary aspects of biodiversity loss.

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“…Small population size, in turn, increases the risk of genetic erosion through drift and inbreeding (Hoffmann and Hercus, 2000). While the effects of reduced genetic variation for population survival are not always obvious and thus a matter of debate, a wealth of studies has reported negative effects of inbreeding on fitness-related traits (Armbruster and Reed, 2005;Fox and Reed, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inbreeding interferes with the heat-shock response

Franke

Fischer

2014

Heredity

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Inbreeding is typically detrimental to individual fitness, with negative effects being often exaggerated in stressful environments. However, the causal mechanisms underlying inbreeding depression in general and the often increased susceptibility to stress in particular are not well understood. We here test whether inbreeding interferes with the heat-shock response, comprising an important component of the stress response which may therefore underscore sensitivity to stress. To this end we subjected the tropical butterfly Bicyclus anynana to a full-factorial design with three temperatures and three levels of inbreeding, and measured the expression of heat-shock protein (HSP) 70 via qPCR. HSP70 expression increased after exposure to heat as compared with cold or control conditions. Most strikingly, inbreeding strongly interfered with the heat-shock response, with inbred individuals showing a very weak upregulation of HSP70 only. Our results thus indicate that, in our study organism, interference with the heat-shock response may be one mechanism underlying reduced fitness of inbred individuals, especially when exposed to stressful conditions. However, these indications need to be corroborated using a broader range of different temperatures, genes and taxa.

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Environmental Stress as an Evolutionary Force

Cited by 331 publications

References 66 publications

A quantitative review of heterozygosity–fitness correlations in animal populations

A quantitative review of heterozygosity–fitness correlations in animal populations

The biotic crisis and the future of evolution

Inbreeding interferes with the heat-shock response

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