Ecological limits to evolutionary rescue.

ABSTRACT: Environments change, for both natural and anthropogenic reasons, which can threaten species persistence. Evolutionary adaptation is a potentially powerful mechanism to allow species to persist in these changing environments. To determine the conditions under which adaptation will prevent extinction (evolutionary rescue), classic quantitative genetics models have assumed a constantly changing environment. They predict that species traits will track a moving environmental optimum with a lag that approaches a constant. If fitness is negative at this lag, the species will go extinct. There have been many elaborations of these models incorporating increased genetic realism. Here, we review and explore the consequences of four ecological complications: non-quadratic fitness functions, interactin

SUBMITTER: Klausmeier CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7662203 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature