Title: Fluctuating selection and global change: a synthesis and review on disentangling the roles of climate amplitude, predictability and novelty
A formidable challenge for global change biologists is to predict how natural populations will respond to the emergence of conditions not observed at present, termed novel climates. Popular approaches to predict population vulnerability are based on the expected degree of novelty relative to the amplitude of historical climate fluctuations experienced by a population. Here, we argue that predictions focused on amplitude may be inaccurate because they ignore the predictability of environmental fluctuations in driving patterns of evolution and responses to climate change. To address this disconnect, we review major findings of evolutionary theory demonstrating the conditions under which phenotypic plasticity is likely to evolve in natural populations, and how plasticity decreases population vulnerability to novel environments. We outline key criteria that experimental studies should aim for to effectively test theoretical predictions, while controlling for the degree of climate novelty. We show that such targeted tests of evolutionary theory are rare, with marine systems being overall underrepresented in this venture despite exhibiting unique opportunities to test theory. We conclude that with more robust experimental designs that manipulate both the amplitude and predictability of fluctuations, while controlling for the degree of novelty, we may better predict population vulnerability to climate change. more »« less
Vinton, Anna C.; Gascoigne, Samuel J.L.; Sepil, Irem; Salguero-Gómez, Roberto(
, Trends in Ecology & Evolution)
Dr Andrea E. A. Stephens
(Ed.)
To forecast extinction risks of natural populations under climate change and direct human impacts, an integrative understanding of both phenotypic plasticity and adaptive evolution is essential. To date, the evidence for whether, when, and how much plasticity facilitates adaptive responses in changing environments is contradictory. We argue that explicitly considering three key environmental change components – rate of change, variance, and temporal autocorrelation – affords a unifying framework of the impact of plasticity on adaptive evolution. These environmental components each distinctively effect evolutionary and ecological processes underpinning population viability. Using this framework, we develop expectations regarding the interplay between plasticity and adaptive evolution in natural populations. This framework has the potential to improve predictions of population viability in a changing world.
Lalejini, Alexander; Ferguson, Austin J.; Grant, Nkrumah A.; Ofria, Charles(
, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution)
Fluctuating environmental conditions are ubiquitous in natural systems, and populations have evolved various strategies to cope with such fluctuations. The particular mechanisms that evolve profoundly influence subsequent evolutionary dynamics. One such mechanism is phenotypic plasticity, which is the ability of a single genotype to produce alternate phenotypes in an environmentally dependent context. Here, we use digital organisms (self-replicating computer programs) to investigate how adaptive phenotypic plasticity alters evolutionary dynamics and influences evolutionary outcomes in cyclically changing environments. Specifically, we examined the evolutionary histories of both plastic populations and non-plastic populations to ask: (1) Does adaptive plasticity promote or constrain evolutionary change? (2) Are plastic populations better able to evolve and then maintain novel traits? And (3), how does adaptive plasticity affect the potential for maladaptive alleles to accumulate in evolving genomes? We find that populations with adaptive phenotypic plasticity undergo less evolutionary change than non-plastic populations, which must rely on genetic variation from de novo mutations to continuously readapt to environmental fluctuations. Indeed, the non-plastic populations undergo more frequent selective sweeps and accumulate many more genetic changes. We find that the repeated selective sweeps in non-plastic populations drive the loss of beneficial traits and accumulation of maladaptive alleles, whereas phenotypic plasticity can stabilize populations against environmental fluctuations. This stabilization allows plastic populations to more easily retain novel adaptive traits than their non-plastic counterparts. In general, the evolution of adaptive phenotypic plasticity shifted evolutionary dynamics to be more similar to that of populations evolving in a static environment than to non-plastic populations evolving in an identical fluctuating environment. All natural environments subject populations to some form of change; our findings suggest that the stabilizing effect of phenotypic plasticity plays an important role in subsequent adaptive evolution.
Anderson, Jill T.; Song, Bao‐Hua(
, Journal of Systematics and Evolution)
Abstract
Climate change poses critical challenges for population persistence in natural communities, for agriculture and environmental sustainability, and for food security. In this review, we discuss recent progress in climatic adaptation in plants. We evaluate whether climate change exerts novel selection and disrupts local adaptation, whether gene flow can facilitate adaptive responses to climate change, and whether adaptive phenotypic plasticity could sustain populations in the short term. Furthermore, we discuss how climate change influences species interactions. Through a more in‐depth understanding of these eco‐evolutionary dynamics, we will increase our capacity to predict the adaptive potential of plants under climate change. In addition, we review studies that dissect the genetic basis of plant adaptation to climate change. Finally, we highlight key research gaps, ranging from validating gene function to elucidating molecular mechanisms, expanding research systems from model species to other natural species, testing the fitness consequences of alleles in natural environments, and designing multifactorial studies that more closely reflect the complex and interactive effects of multiple climate change factors. By leveraging interdisciplinary tools (e.g., cutting‐edge omics toolkits, novel ecological strategies, newly developed genome editing technology), researchers can more accurately predict the probability that species can persist through this rapid and intense period of environmental change, as well as cultivate crops to withstand climate change, and conserve biodiversity in natural systems.
Martin, Ryan A.; da Silva, Carmen R. B.; Moore, Michael P.; Diamond, Sarah E.(
, WIREs Climate Change)
Abstract
Decades of research have illuminated the underlying ingredients that determine the scope of evolutionary responses to climate change. The field of evolutionary biology therefore stands ready to take what it has learned about influences upon the rate of adaptive evolution—such as population demography, generation time, and standing genetic variation—and apply it to assess if and how populations can evolve fast enough to “keep pace” with climate change. Here, our review highlights what the field of evolutionary biology can contribute and what it still needs to learn to provide more mechanistic predictions of the winners and losers of climate change. We begin by developing broad predictions for contemporary evolution to climate change based on theory. We then discuss methods for assessing climate‐driven contemporary evolution, including quantitative genetic studies, experimental evolution, and space‐for‐time substitutions. After providing this mechanism‐focused overview of both the evidence for evolutionary responses to climate change and more specifically, evolving to keep pace with climate change, we next consider the factors that limit actual evolutionary responses. In this context, we consider the dual role of phenotypic plasticity in facilitating but also impeding evolutionary change. Finally, we detail how a deeper consideration of evolutionary constraints can improve forecasts of responses to climate change and therefore also inform conservation and management decisions.
This article is categorized under:
Climate, Ecology, and Conservation > Observed Ecological Changes
Climate, Ecology, and Conservation > Extinction Risk
Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change
Kling, Matthew M.; Auer, Stephanie L.; Comer, Patrick J.; Ackerly, David D.; Hamilton, Healy(
, Global Change Biology)
Abstract
Observed ecological responses to climate change are highly individualistic across species and locations, and understanding the drivers of this variability is essential for management and conservation efforts. While it is clear that differences in exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity all contribute to heterogeneity in climate change vulnerability, predicting these features at macroecological scales remains a critical challenge. We explore multiple drivers of heterogeneous vulnerability across the distributions of 96 vegetation types of the ecologically diverse western US, using data on observed climate trends from 1948 to 2014 to highlight emerging patterns of change. We ask three novel questions about factors potentially shaping vulnerability across the region: (a) How does sensitivity to different climate variables vary geographically and across vegetation classes? (b) How do multivariate climate exposure patterns interact with these sensitivities to shape vulnerability patterns? (c) How different are these vulnerability patterns according to three widely implemented vulnerability paradigms—niche novelty (decline in modeled suitability), temporal novelty (standardized anomaly), and spatial novelty (inbound climate velocity)—each of which uses a distinct frame of reference to quantify climate departure? We propose that considering these three novelty paradigms in combination could help improve our understanding and prediction of heterogeneous climate change responses, and we discuss the distinct climate adaptation strategies connected with different combinations of high and low novelty across the three metrics. Our results reveal a diverse mosaic of climate change vulnerability signatures across the region's plant communities. Each of the above factors contributes strongly to this heterogeneity: climate variable sensitivity exhibits clear patterns across vegetation types, multivariate climate change data reveal highly diverse exposure signatures across locations, and the three novelty paradigms diverge widely in their climate change vulnerability predictions. Together, these results shed light on potential drivers of individualistic climate change responses and may help to inform effective management strategies.
Bitter, M. C., Wong, J. M., Dam, H. G., Donelan, S. C., Kenkel, C. D., Komoroske, L. M., Nickols, K. J., Rivest, E. B., Salinas, S., Burgess, S. C., and Lotterhos, K. E. Fluctuating selection and global change: a synthesis and review on disentangling the roles of climate amplitude, predictability and novelty. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10335925. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 288.1957 Web. doi:10.1098/rspb.2021.0727.
Bitter, M. C., Wong, J. M., Dam, H. G., Donelan, S. C., Kenkel, C. D., Komoroske, L. M., Nickols, K. J., Rivest, E. B., Salinas, S., Burgess, S. C., & Lotterhos, K. E. Fluctuating selection and global change: a synthesis and review on disentangling the roles of climate amplitude, predictability and novelty. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 288 (1957). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10335925. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0727
Bitter, M. C., Wong, J. M., Dam, H. G., Donelan, S. C., Kenkel, C. D., Komoroske, L. M., Nickols, K. J., Rivest, E. B., Salinas, S., Burgess, S. C., and Lotterhos, K. E.
"Fluctuating selection and global change: a synthesis and review on disentangling the roles of climate amplitude, predictability and novelty". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 288 (1957). Country unknown/Code not available. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0727.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10335925.
@article{osti_10335925,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Fluctuating selection and global change: a synthesis and review on disentangling the roles of climate amplitude, predictability and novelty},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10335925},
DOI = {10.1098/rspb.2021.0727},
abstractNote = {A formidable challenge for global change biologists is to predict how natural populations will respond to the emergence of conditions not observed at present, termed novel climates. Popular approaches to predict population vulnerability are based on the expected degree of novelty relative to the amplitude of historical climate fluctuations experienced by a population. Here, we argue that predictions focused on amplitude may be inaccurate because they ignore the predictability of environmental fluctuations in driving patterns of evolution and responses to climate change. To address this disconnect, we review major findings of evolutionary theory demonstrating the conditions under which phenotypic plasticity is likely to evolve in natural populations, and how plasticity decreases population vulnerability to novel environments. We outline key criteria that experimental studies should aim for to effectively test theoretical predictions, while controlling for the degree of climate novelty. We show that such targeted tests of evolutionary theory are rare, with marine systems being overall underrepresented in this venture despite exhibiting unique opportunities to test theory. We conclude that with more robust experimental designs that manipulate both the amplitude and predictability of fluctuations, while controlling for the degree of novelty, we may better predict population vulnerability to climate change.},
journal = {Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences},
volume = {288},
number = {1957},
author = {Bitter, M. C. and Wong, J. M. and Dam, H. G. and Donelan, S. C. and Kenkel, C. D. and Komoroske, L. M. and Nickols, K. J. and Rivest, E. B. and Salinas, S. and Burgess, S. C. and Lotterhos, K. E.},
}
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