Anthropogenic evolution in an insect wing polymorphism following widespread deforestation

Anthropogenic environmental change can underpin major shifts in natural selective regimes, and can thus alter the evolutionary trajectories of wild populations. However, little is known about the evolutionary impacts of deforestation—one of the most pervasive human-driven changes to terrestrial ecosystems globally. Absence of forest cover (i.e. exposure) has been suggested to play a role in selecting for insect flightlessness in montane ecosystems. Here, we capitalize on human-driven variation in alpine treeline elevation in New Zealand to test whether anthropogenic deforestation has caused shifts in the distributions of flight-capable and flightless phenotypes in a wing-polymorphic lineage of stoneflies from the Zelandoperla fenestrata species complex. Transect sampling revealed sharp transitions from flight-capable to flightless populations with increasing elevation. However, these phenotypic transitions were consistently delineated by the elevation of local treelines, rather than by absolute elevation, providing a novel example of human-driven evolution in response to recent deforestation. The inferred rapid shifts to flightlessness in newly deforested regions have implications for the evolution and conservation of invertebrate biodiversity.

Anthropogenic Signatures in the Context of Landscape Evolution: Evidence from Citanduy Watershed, Java, Indonesia

The impact of humans on landscapes may differ across regions because anthropogenic intervention on the respective landscapes occurs in different human-induced contexts. This study was designed to assess the human-induced landscape evolution of the Citanduy Watershed, Java, Indonesia, and determine its anthropogenic signatures. Several approaches were used, namely anthropogenic landscape identification, anthropogenic soil development, sediment analysis, and monitoring of changes to Segara Anakan lagoon at the mouth of the Citanduy Rier. Five types of anthropogenic landscapes were observed in the research area, from a slightly modified landscape to a fully anthropogenic landscape. The anthropogenic signature was also found in the sediment of the lagoon. Present and recent environmental evolution of the lagoon was reconstructed based on series changes in the lagoon area. This reconstruction was then linked to the governmental program and anthropogenic intervention to reveal the complexity of the human-induced landscape evolution. Anthropogenic phenomena were found to strongly influence the evolution of Segara Anakan lagoon, as recorded approximately through three phases of its evolution: 1) natural processes occurring continuously until 1960, 2) human-induced landscape evolution, the boundary of which occurred in 1960–1980, and 3) the recent anthropogenic evolution that has existed since 1980.