scholarly journals Evolution mediates the effects of apex predation on aquatic food webs

2013 ◽  
Vol 280 (1763) ◽  
pp. 20130859 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Urban
Keyword(s):  
Food Webs ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Local Food ◽  
Common Garden ◽  
Apex Predator ◽  
Spotted Salamander ◽  
Predator Species ◽  
Prey Biomass ◽  
Common Garden Experiments

Ecological and evolutionary mechanisms are increasingly thought to shape local community dynamics. Here, I evaluate if the local adaptation of a meso-predator to an apex predator alters local food webs. The marbled salamander ( Ambystoma opacum ) is an apex predator that consumes both the spotted salamander ( Ambystoma maculatum ) and shared zooplankton prey. Common garden experiments reveal that spotted salamander populations which co-occur with marbled salamanders forage more intensely than those that face other predator species. These foraging differences, in turn, alter the diversity, abundance and composition of zooplankton communities in common garden experiments and natural ponds. Locally adapted spotted salamanders exacerbate prey biomass declines associated with apex predation, but dampen the top-down effects of apex predation on prey diversity. Countergradient selection on foraging explains why locally adapted spotted salamanders exacerbate prey biomass declines. The two salamander species prefer different prey species, which explains why adapted spotted salamanders buffer changes in prey composition owing to apex predation. Results suggest that local adaptation can strongly mediate effects from apex predation on local food webs. Community ecologists might often need to consider the evolutionary history of populations to understand local diversity patterns, food web dynamics, resource gradients and their responses to disturbance.

scholarly journals Multiple common garden experiments suggest lack of local adaptation in an invasive ornamental plant

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 209-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. K. Ebeling ◽  
J. Stocklin ◽  
I. Hensen ◽  
H. Auge
Keyword(s):  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Common Garden ◽  
Ornamental Plant ◽  
Common Garden Experiments

scholarly journals Environment and phenology shape local adaptation in thermal performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1955) ◽  
pp. 20210741
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Villeneuve ◽  
Lisa M. Komoroske ◽  
Brian S. Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Thermal Performance ◽  
Time Series Data ◽  
Thermal Environment ◽  
Common Garden ◽  
Series Data ◽  
Urosalpinx Cinerea ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Common Garden Experiments

Populations within species often exhibit variation in traits that reflect local adaptation and further shape existing adaptive potential for species to respond to climate change. However, our mechanistic understanding of how the environment shapes trait variation remains poor. Here, we used common garden experiments to quantify thermal performance in eight populations of the marine snail Urosalpinx cinerea across thermal gradients on the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts of North America. We then evaluated the relationship between thermal performance and environmental metrics derived from time-series data. Our results reveal a novel pattern of ‘mixed’ trait performance adaptation, where thermal optima were positively correlated with spawning temperature (cogradient variation), while maximum trait performance was negatively correlated with season length (countergradient variation). This counterintuitive pattern probably arises because of phenological shifts in the spawning season, whereby ‘cold’ populations delay spawning until later in the year when temperatures are warmer compared to ‘warm’ populations that spawn earlier in the year when temperatures are cooler. Our results show that variation in thermal performance can be shaped by multiple facets of the environment and are linked to organismal phenology and natural history. Understanding the impacts of climate change on organisms, therefore, requires the knowledge of how climate change will alter different aspects of the thermal environment.

scholarly journals Coherent synthesis of genomic associations with phenotypes and home environments

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse R. Lasky ◽  
Brenna R. Forester ◽  
Matthew Reimherr
Keyword(s):  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Environmental Gradients ◽  
Common Garden ◽  
Relative Fitness ◽  
Home Environments ◽  
Climate Gradients ◽  
A Genome ◽  
Fitness Tradeoffs ◽  
Common Garden Experiments ◽  
Diverse Data

Local adaptation is often studied via 1) multiple common garden experiments comparing performance of genotypes in different environments and 2) sequencing genotypes from multiple locations and characterizing geographic patterns in allele frequency. Both approaches aim to characterize the same pattern (local adaptation), yet the complementary information from each has not yet been coherently integrated. Here, we develop a genome-wide association model of genotype interactions with continuous environmental gradients (G×E), i.e. reaction norms. We present an approach to impute relative fitness, allowing us to coherently synthesize evidence from common garden and genome-environment associations. Our approach identifies loci exhibiting environmental clines where alleles are associated with higher fitness in home environments. Simulations show our approach can increase power to detect loci causing local adaptation. In a case study on Arabidopsis thaliana, most identified SNPs exhibited home allele advantage and fitness tradeoffs along climate gradients, suggesting selective gradients can maintain allelic clines. SNPs exhibiting G×E associations with fitness were enriched in genic regions, putative partial selective sweeps, and associations with an adaptive phenotype (flowering time plasticity). We discuss extensions for situations where only adaptive phenotypes other than fitness are available. Many types of data may point toward the loci underlying G×E and local adaptation; coherent models of diverse data provide a principled basis for synthesis.

Biotic interactions affect fitness across latitudes, but only drive local adaptation in the tropics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna L. Hargreaves ◽  
Rachel M. Germain ◽  
Megan Bontrager ◽  
Joshua Persi ◽  
Amy L. Angert
Keyword(s):  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Environmental Heterogeneity ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Biotic Interactions ◽  
Common Garden ◽  
Spatiotemporal Scales ◽  
Common Garden Experiments ◽  
Experimental Treatments ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
Biotic Environment

AbstractLocal adaptation to broad-scale environmental heterogeneity can increase species’ distributions and diversification, but which environmental components commonly drive local adaptation— particularly the importance of biotic interactions—is unclear. Biotic interactions should drive local adaptation when they impose consistent divergent selection; if this is common we expect experiments to detect more frequent and stronger local adaptation when biotic interactions are left intact. We tested this hypothesis using a meta-analysis of common-garden experiments from 138 studies (149 taxa). Across studies, local adaptation was common and biotic interactions affected fitness. Nevertheless, local adaptation was neither more common nor stronger when biotic interactions were left intact, either between experimental treatments within studies (control vs. biotic interactions experimentally manipulated) or between studies that used natural vs. biotically-altered transplant environments. However, tropical studies, which comprised only 7% of our data, found strong local adaptation in intact environments but not when negative biotic interactions were ameliorated, suggesting that interactions frequently drive local adaptation in the tropics. Our results suggest that biotic interactions often fail to drive local adaptation even though they affect fitness, perhaps because the temperate-zone biotic environment is less predictable at the spatiotemporal scales required for local adaptation.

scholarly journals The signature of fine scale local adaptation in Atlantic salmon revealed from common garden experiments in nature

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 881-900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ciar L. O'Toole ◽  
Thomas E. Reed ◽  
Deborah Bailie ◽  
Caroline Bradley ◽  
Deirdre Cotter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Salmon ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Common Garden ◽  
Fine Scale ◽  
Common Garden Experiments

scholarly journals Fine-scale local adaptation in an invasive freshwater fish has evolved in contemporary time

2013 ◽  
Vol 280 (1751) ◽  
pp. 20122327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. H. Westley ◽  
Eric J. Ward ◽  
Ian A. Fleming
Keyword(s):  
Freshwater Fish ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Relative Survival ◽  
Common Garden ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Adaptive Divergence ◽  
Fine Scale ◽  
Ecological Selection ◽  
Reciprocal Transplants ◽  
Common Garden Experiments

Adaptive evolutionary change in only a few generations can increase the ability of non-native invasive species to spread, and yet adaptive divergence is rarely assessed in recently established populations. In this study, we experimentally test for evidence of fine-scale local adaptation in juvenile survival and growth among three populations of an invasive freshwater fish with reciprocal transplants and common-garden experiments. Despite intrinsic differences in habitat quality, in two of three populations we detected evidence of increased survival in ‘home’ versus ‘away’ environments with a Bayesian occupancy model fitted to mark–recapture data. We found support for the ‘local’ versus ‘foreign’ criterion of local adaptation as 14 of 15 pairwise comparisons of performance were consistent with local adaptation ( p < 0.001). Patterns in growth were less clear, though we detected evidence of location- and population-level effects. Although the agents of divergent ecological selection are not known in this system, our results combine to indicate that adaptive divergence—reflected by higher relative survival of local individuals—can occur in a small number of generations and only a few kilometres apart on the landscape.

scholarly journals Complex interactions between local adaptation, phenotypic plasticity and sex affect vulnerability to warming in a widespread marine copepod

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 182115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Sasaki ◽  
Sydney Hedberg ◽  
Kailin Richardson ◽  
Hans G. Dam
Keyword(s):  
Phenotypic Plasticity ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Thermal Performance ◽  
Thermal Tolerance ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Common Garden ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Marine Copepod ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Common Garden Experiments

Predicting the response of populations to climate change requires an understanding of how various factors affect thermal performance. Genetic differentiation is well known to affect thermal performance, but the effects of sex and developmental phenotypic plasticity often go uncharacterized. We used common garden experiments to test for effects of local adaptation, developmental phenotypic plasticity and individual sex on thermal performance of the ubiquitous copepod,Acartia tonsa(Calanoida, Crustacea) from two populations strongly differing in thermal regimes (Florida and Connecticut, USA). Females had higher thermal tolerance than males in both populations, while the Florida population had higher thermal tolerance compared with the Connecticut population. An effect of developmental phenotypic plasticity on thermal tolerance was observed only in the Connecticut population. Our results show clearly that thermal performance is affected by complex interactions of the three tested variables. Ignoring sex-specific differences in thermal performance may result in a severe underestimation of population-level impacts of warming because of population decline due to sperm limitation. Furthermore, despite having a higher thermal tolerance, low-latitude populations may be more vulnerable to warming as they lack the ability to respond to increases in temperature through phenotypic plasticity.

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