Fluctuating selection maintains distinct species phenotypes in an ecological community in the wild.

ABSTRACT: Species' phenotypic characteristics often remain unchanged over long stretches of geological time. Stabilizing selection-in which fitness is highest for intermediate phenotypes and lowest for the extremes-has been widely invoked as responsible for this pattern. At the community level, such stabilizing selection acting individually on co-occurring species is expected to produce a rugged fitness landscape on which different species occupy distinct fitness peaks. However, even with an explosion of microevolutionary field studies over the past four decades, evidence for persistent stabilizing selection driving long-term stasis is lacking. Nonetheless, biologists continue to invoke stabilizing selection as a major factor explaining macroevolutionary patterns. Here, by directly measuring natural

SUBMITTER: Stroud JT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10589706 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature