Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.
2008
Research on the interactions between evolutionary and ecological dynamics has largely focused on local spatial scales and on relatively simple ecological communities. However, recent work demonstrates that dispersal can drastically alter the interplay between ecological and evolutionary dynamics, often in unexpected ways. We argue that a dispersal-centered synthesis of metacommunity ecology and evolution is necessary to make further progress in this important area of research.
abstract: Adaptive evolution within species and community assembly involving multiple species are both affected by dispersal and spatiotemporal environmental variation and may thus interact with each other. We examined this interaction in a simple three-patch metacommunity and found that these two processes produce very different associations between species composition and local environment. In most conditions, we find a pattern we call " species sorting, " wherein local adaptation by resident species cannot prevent invasions by other preadapted species as environmental conditions change (strong association between local environmental conditions and local community composition). When dispersal rates are very low relative to the other two rates, local adaptation by resident species predominates, leading to strong priority effects that prevent successful colonization by other species that would have been well adapted, a pattern we call " local monopolization. " When dispersal and evolutionary rates are both very high, we find that an evolving species outcompetes other species in all patches, a pattern we call " global monopolization. " When environmental oscillations are very frequent, local monopolization predominates. Our findings indicate that there can be strong modification of community assembly by local adaptive processes and that these depend strongly on the relative rates of evolution, dispersal, and environmental change.
Dispersal can affect the assembly of local communities in a metacommunity as well as evolution of local populations in a metapopulation. These two processes may also affect each other in ways that have not yet been well studied and that may have novel effects on community structure. Here, we illustrate the interaction of these two processes on community structure with a model of adaptive evolutionary dynamics of plant defenses in a metacommunity food web involving multiple patches along a productivity gradient. We find an enhanced suite of adaptive plant types in our metacommunity model than is predicted in the absence of dispersal. We also find that this, and the movement of nutrients among patches via dispersal, alters patterns of food web architecture, trophic structure and diversity along the productivity gradient. Overall, our model illustrates that evolutionary and metacommunity dynamics may influence communities in complex interactive ways that may not be predicted by models that ignore either of these types of processes.
Trends in ecology & evolution, 2015
Current research on eco-evolutionary dynamics is mainly concerned with understanding the role of rapid (or 'contemporary') evolution in structuring ecological patterns. We argue that the current eco-evolutionary research program, which focuses largely on natural selection, should be expanded to more explicitly consider other evolutionary processes such as gene flow. Because multiple evolutionary processes interact to generate quantitative variation in the degree of local maladaptation, we focus on how studying the ecological effects of maladaptation will lead to a more comprehensive view of how evolution can influence ecology. We explore how maladaptation can influence ecology through the lens of island biogeography theory, which yields some novel predictions, such as patch isolation increasing species richness.
Local negative feedbacks occur when the occupation of a site by a species decreases the subsequent fitness of related individuals compared to potential competitors. Such negative feedbacks can enhance diversity by changing the spatial structure of the environment. The conditions, however , involve dispersive, environmental and evolutionary processes in complex interactive ways. We introduce a model that accounts for four mechanisms: colonisation-competition-extinction ecological dynamics, evolutionary dynamics, local negative feedbacks and environmental averaging. Three qualitatively distinct dynamics are possible, one dominated by specialists, another dominated by generalists and an intermediate situation exhibiting taxon cycles. We discuss how metacommunity diversity, macro-ecological patterns and environmental patterning are linked to the three qualitative dynamics. The model provides classical shapes for morph-abundance distributions , or diversity-area relationships. Diversity can be high when specialists dominate or when taxon cycles happen. Finally, local negative feedbacks often yield fine-grain environments for taxon cycle dynamics and coarse-grain environments when generalists dominate.
Ecology Letters, 2004
Functional Ecology, 2019
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Advances in Ecological Research, 2013
Marine Ecology Progress Series, 2012
River Research and Applications
Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 2019
Ecology Letters, 2011
BMC Ecology
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2011
Ecology Letters
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2010
Ecology Letters, 2004
Ecological Modelling, 2009
FEMS Microbiology Reviews
Ecology, 2014
PLoS ONE, 2012
Biodiversity in Ecosystems - Linking Structure and Function, 2015
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2013
Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2010
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2020
Ecology Letters, 2009
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences