Evolvability meets biogeography: evolutionary potential decreases at high and low environmental favourability.

ABSTRACT: Understanding and forecasting the effects of environmental change on wild populations requires knowledge on a critical question: do populations have the ability to evolve in response to that change? However, our knowledge on how evolution works in wild conditions under different environmental circumstances is extremely limited. We investigated how environmental variation influences the evolutionary potential of phenotypic traits. We used published data to collect or calculate 135 estimates of evolvability of morphological traits of European wild bird populations. We characterized the environmental favourability of each population throughout the species' breeding distribution. Our results suggest that the evolutionary potential of morphological traits decreases as environmental favourabilit

SUBMITTER: Martinez-Padilla J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5474074 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature