“Evolution Canyon,” a potential microscale monitor of global warming across life

Abstract

Climatic change and stress is a major driving force of evolution. The effects of climate change on living organisms have been shown primarily on regional and global scales. Here I propose the "Evolution Canyon" (EC) microscale model as a potential life monitor of global warming in Israel and the rest of the world. The EC model reveals evolution in action at a microscale involving biodiversity divergence, adaptation, and incipient sympatric speciation across life from viruses and bacteria through fungi, plants, and animals. The EC consists of two abutting slopes separated, on average, by 200 m. The tropical, xeric, savannoid, "African" south-facing slope (AS = SFS) abuts the forested "European" north-facing slope (ES = NFS). The AS receives 200-800% higher solar radiation than the ES. The ES represents the south European forested maquis. The AS and ES exhibit drought and shade stress, respectively. Major adaptations on the AS are because of solar radiation, heat, and drought, whereas those on the ES relate to light stress and photosynthesis. Preliminary evidence suggests the extinction of some European species on the ES and AS. In Drosophila, a 10-fold higher migration was recorded in 2003 from the AS to ES. I advance some predictions that could be followed in diverse species in EC. The EC microclimatic model is optimal to track global warming at a microscale across life from viruses and bacteria to mammals in Israel, and in additional ECs across the planet.climate and evolution | species extinction | climate impact | adaptive response | natural selection C limate variation and change are major abiotic stresses driving life's evolution (1-22). Parmesan and Yohe (9), analyzing results for 1,700 species, showed that recent biological trends match climate-change predictions. Global meta-analyses documented significant range shifts averaging 6.1 km per decade northward (or 6.1 m per decade upward) and significant mean advancement of spring events by 2.3 d per decade. A significant globally coherent fingerprint of climate change across natural systems was identified for 289 species (9). Parmesan (7) reviewed evidence of climate change indicating that climate change is already affecting living systems in diverse perspectives, including phenological changes, species interactions, range shifts, contractions and abundance, elevation shifts, marine communities' shifts, pest and disease shifts, tree-line patterns, extinctions, and evolutionary genetic and plasticity changes. New concerns have been raised about the ability of the earth's biodiversity of plants and animals to maintain a viable foothold on the planet if temperatures continue to rise. (See ref. 21 for an alternative point of view). In a recent review on global warming, during the last three decades in wild cereals, the progenitors of cultivated wheat and barley showed earliness in flowering time and in genetic changes (22) and global decline in cultivars' crops (19). Rapid range shifts of species are associated with high levels of climate warming, shifting to ...

Sympatric incipient speciation of spiny miceAcomysat “Evolution Canyon,” Israel

“…Thus, interslope divergent ecological speciation was rapid and caused incipient SS. The final fate of these newly evolving species with slope-specific adaptations (42) is unknown, as is the fate of established species owing to environmental stresses, such as global warming (9) or that of climatic speciation on the blind mole rat (43).…”

“…Insights obtained from the long-term laboratory selection experiments as to how adaptation sweeps through the genome (28,29) could potentially reveal insight into the mutational dynamics that most likely occur in natural populations under similar situations, such as, for example, global warming (9). These changes could involve de novo nonrandom or adaptive mutations, or those already present in the population as existing genetic diversity.…”

“…Owing to this global pattern of incipient SS across life, the EC was dubbed the "Israeli Galapagos" (7). This local adaptive and speciational interslope microclimatic divergence also occurs in the other three "Evolution Canyons" studied in Israel in the Galilee, Golan, and Negev Mountains (8) as well as in other evolution canyons worldwide (9).…”

“…The EC model reveals divergent interslope evolution in action involving biodiversity across life from bacteria to mammals, followed by divergent genomic, proteomic, and phenomic adaptive complexes (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9). In the EC (details are given in Supporting Information) major adaptive complexes on the "African" slope (AS) are due to solar radiation, heat, and drought, whereas those on the "European" slope (ES) relate to shade or light stress and photosynthesis.…”

Biochemical and Molecular Analysis of Superoxide Dismutase in Sordaria fimicola and Aspergillus niger Collected from Different Environments

“…Sixty strains of S. fimicola collected from Evolution Canyon 1 (EC I) in Mount Carmel, Israel, and one strain SF13 obtained from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, USA, were used in the current research. EC 1 has two opposite slopes: a south-facing slope (SFS) with terrestrial climate and a north-facing slope (NFS) with a temperate climate [12]. Stations 1 and 2 are located on the SFS at elevations of 120 and 90 m, respectively, while stations 6 and 7 are located on the NFS at 120 and 180 m above sea level, respectively.…”