Fluctuations in lifetime selection in an autocorrelated environment.

ABSTRACT: Most natural environments vary stochastically and are temporally autocorrelated. Previous theory investigating the effects of environmental autocorrelation on evolution mostly assumed that total fitness resulted from a single selection episode. Yet organisms are likely to experience selection repeatedly along their life, in response to possibly different environmental states. We model the evolution of a quantitative trait in organisms with non-overlapping generations undergoing several episodes of selection in a randomly fluctuating and autocorrelated environment. We show that the evolutionary dynamics depends not directly on fluctuations of the environment, but instead on those of an effective phenotypic optimum that integrates the effects of all selection episodes within each generation.

SUBMITTER: Cotto O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7115991 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature