RESUMEN
Organisms can change their environment and in doing so change the selection they experience and how they evolve. Population density is one potential mediator of such interactions because high population densities can impact the ecosystem and reduce resource availability. At present, such interactions are best known from theory and laboratory experiments. Here we quantify the importance of such interactions in nature by transplanting guppies from a stream where they co-occur with predators into tributaries that previously lacked both guppies and predators. If guppies evolve solely because of the immediate reduction in mortality rate, the strength of selection and rate of evolution should be greatest at the outset and then decline as the population adapts to its new environment. If indirect effects caused by the increase in guppy population density in the absence of predation prevail, then there should be a lag in guppy evolution because time is required for them to modify their environment. The duration of this lag is predicted to be associated with the environmental modification caused by guppies. We observed a lag in life-history evolution associated with increases in population density and altered ecology. How guppies evolved matched predictions derived from evolutionary theory that incorporates such density effects.
Asunto(s)
Evolución Biológica , Rasgos de la Historia de Vida , Poecilia/fisiología , Animales , Tamaño Corporal , Ecosistema , Femenino , Masculino , Poecilia/genética , Densidad de Población , Conducta Predatoria , Trinidad y TobagoRESUMEN
Colonization of novel environments can alter selective pressures and act as a catalyst for rapid evolution in nature. Theory and empirical studies suggest that the ability of a population to exhibit an adaptive evolutionary response to novel selection pressures should reflect the presence of sufficient additive genetic variance and covariance for individual and correlated traits. As correlated traits should not respond to selection independently, the structure of correlations of traits can bias or constrain adaptive evolution. Models of how multiple correlated traits respond to selection often assume spatial and temporal stability of trait-correlations within populations. Yet, trait-correlations can also be plastic in response to environmental variation. Phenotypic plasticity, the ability of a single genotype to produce different phenotypes across environments, is of particular interest because it can induce population-wide changes in the combination of traits exposed to selection and change the trajectory of evolutionary divergence. We tested the ability of phenotypic plasticity to modify trait-correlations by comparing phenotypic variance and covariance in the body-shapes of four experimental populations of Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) to their ancestral population. We found that phenotypic plasticity produced both adaptive and novel aspects of body-shape, which was repeated in all four experimental populations. Further, phenotypic plasticity changed patterns of covariance among morphological characters. These findings suggest our ability to make inferences about patterns of divergence based on correlations of traits in extant populations may be limited if novel environments not only induce plasticity in multiple traits, but also change the correlations among the traits.
Asunto(s)
Ambiente , Variación Genética , Fenotipo , Poecilia/genética , Animales , Evolución Biológica , Femenino , Cadena Alimentaria , Masculino , Poecilia/crecimiento & desarrollo , Trinidad y TobagoRESUMEN
Novel environments often impose directional selection for a new phenotypic optimum. Novel environments, however, can also change the distribution of phenotypes exposed to selection by inducing phenotypic plasticity. Plasticity can produce phenotypes that either align with or oppose the direction of selection. When plasticity and selection are parallel, plasticity is considered adaptive because it provides a better pairing between the phenotype and the environment. If the plastic response is incomplete and falls short of producing the optimum phenotype, synergistic selection can lead to genetic divergence and bring the phenotype closer to the optimum. In contrast, non-adaptive plasticity should increase the strength of selection, because phenotypes will be further from the local optimum, requiring antagonistic selection to overcome the phenotype-environment mismatch and facilitate adaptive divergence. We test these ideas by documenting predator-induced plasticity for resting metabolic rate and growth rate in populations of the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) adapted to high and low predation. We find reduced metabolic rates and growth rates when cues from a predator are present during development, a pattern suggestive of adaptive and non-adaptive plasticity, respectively. When we compared populations recently transplanted from a high-predation environment into four streams lacking predators, we found evidence for rapid adaptive evolution both in metabolism and growth rate. We discuss the implications for predicting how traits will respond to selection, depending on the type of plasticity they exhibit.
Asunto(s)
Adaptación Biológica/fisiología , Cadena Alimentaria , Modelos Animales , Fenotipo , Poecilia/crecimiento & desarrollo , Estrés Fisiológico/fisiología , Animales , Metabolismo Basal/fisiología , Modelos Lineales , Selección Genética , Trinidad y TobagoRESUMEN
Divergent selection pressures across environments can result in phenotypic differentiation that is due to local adaptation, phenotypic plasticity, or both. Trinidadian guppies exhibit local adaptation to the presence or absence of predators, but the degree to which predator-induced plasticity contributes to population differentiation is less clear. We conducted common garden experiments on guppies obtained from two drainages containing populations adapted to high- and low-predation environments. We reared full-siblings from all populations in treatments simulating the presumed ancestral (predator cues present) and derived (predator cues absent) conditions and measured water column use, head morphology, and size at maturity. When reared in presence of predator cues, all populations had phenotypes that were typical of a high-predation ecotype. However, when reared in the absence of predator cues, guppies from high- and low-predation regimes differed in head morphology and size at maturity; the qualitative nature of these differences corresponded to those that characterize adaptive phenotypes in high- versus low-predation environments. Thus, divergence in plasticity is due to phenotypic differences between high- and low-predation populations when reared in the absence of predator cues. These results suggest that plasticity might initially play an important role during colonization of novel environments, and then evolve as a by-product of adaptation to the derived environment.