Eco-evolutionary dynamics of living systems: Applications

EEP research demonstrated that even optimizing selection – generally believed by experts to help species survive environmental changes – can have the diametrically opposite effect of causing extinctions [1]. A complementary study showed that the seemingly cooperative process of conspecifics aggregating in groups to jointly overcome environmental challenges can spiral out of control and cause runaway evolution that eventually results in extinction [2].

Under the right conditions, eco-evolutionary dynamics help mitigate the impacts of environmental change and increase the global species pool through processes of diversification and speciation. Several studies in 2013 aimed to identify such conditions.

• A comprehensive taxonomy of the eco-evolutionary processes underlying adaptive speciation, identifying a previously overlooked mechanism through which biodiversity can rise [3].
• Two studies [4] [5] respectively reviewed the roles of genetics and hybridization in speciation, identifying lacunas in understanding as well as promising directions for future research.
• Addressing one such lacuna, scientists analyzed (Figure 1) how spatial structure can crucially facilitate diversification and speciation [6] [7]. 
• A study was conducted of the potential of a single gene for inducing speciation and derived conditions that favor recessive and dominant alleles [8].
• An investigation of diversification in predator-prey systems confirmed the widely held belief that predation can induce diversification of prey. Furthermore, the study related the resultant diversification rates to interspecific competition in the prey and revealed an alternating pattern of predator-prey diversification [9].
  
  

  Figure 1. A realistic eco-physiological model is used to uncover the evolutionary history of a pair of coregonid fishes in Lake Stechlin, Germany. Speciation of a single ancestor gives rise to two new species adapted to different temperatures.

  
  

EEP’s research further elucidated how individual behavior and individual traits affect the eco-evolutionary dynamics of ecological populations and communities.

• It was shown how increased or decreased movement rates in response to the presence of a prey or predator influence the demographic stability of populations [10].
• Researchers demonstrated how the timing of species invasion and the number of invading individuals can be of critical importance in determining whether such an invasion succeeds [11].
• A description was provided of how the degree of phenotypic plasticity is evolutionarily destined to change over the lifespan of individuals, which is likely to have as yet unprobed implications for population dynamics [12].
• There was an investigation into the evolution of resource specialization and unexpectedly discovered that changes in resource use can induce cycling in population abundances, and even cause population extinctions [13].
  
• Finally, scientists investigated the consequences of predators switching between multiple prey species and thus derived as an approximation an empirically observed power-law relationship between ratios of prey abundance and prey intake [14]. As part of this work, a new generalized functional response for predators switching between multiple prey species was developed, which is important for expanding the range of eco-evolutionary community dynamics that can be modeled with contemporary methods.

Last edited: 22 May 2014