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1.
Reciprocal transplantations of Spartina patens genotypes from adjacent salt marsh, swale, and dune habitats provided evidence for genetic differentiation among subpopulations, due at least in part to contrasting selection regimes. Genet survival in the different habitats was related to the amount of genetic divergence. In the dune habitat, marsh ramets showed the lowest survival, swale ramets showed intermediate survival, and dune ramets showed the highest survival. This relationship was not reciprocal, however. The marsh habitat afforded an environment where survival was maximal for all genotypes. Thus, by comparison, the dune environment appeared to impose a more intense selection pressure, and the swale an intermediate selection pressure on Spartina patens. In each site resident genotypes tended to show greater relative fitness than aliens. This evidence for genetic divergence corroborates that previously reported on morphometric (Silander and Antonovics, 1979) and allozymic traits (Silander, 1984). High levels of phenotypic plasticity may permit greater adaptation to the spatially and temporally heterogeneous environment occupied by S. patens than would genetic variation alone. Dune and swale genets were more phenotypically plastic across traits examined than were marsh genotypes. The higher plasticity in these peripheral subpopulations may confer increased fitness among residents and compensate for observed declines in genetic variation. A slight decrease in genetic variability was evident from marsh to dune subpopulations. However, since the differences in genetic variation among subpopulations were small, and disparities did occur, it is unlikely that evolutionary divergence is retarded primarily by a lack of genetic variability in the characters considered. Evidence is presented to indicate that evolutionary divergence among subpopulations may be retarded by negative or unfavorable correlations among characters being selected simultaneously. These negative correlations may increase extinction probabilities in small peripheral populations, such as those represented by the dune or swale, and are likely to lower fitness. Based on these observations, I hypothesize that further microevolution may be retarded in peripheral dune and swale subpopulations, primarily by unfavorable genetic correlation structures among fitness components or characters under simultaneous selection. Contributing factors may include lowered genetic variance and higher levels of phenotypic plasticity.  相似文献   

2.
3.
A connection is hypothesized between the physiological consequences of mutualistic symbiosis and life's average long-term impact on certain highly biologically conserved environmental variables. This hypothesis is developed analytically and with a variant of the Daisyworld model. Biological homeostasis is frequently effective due to co-ordination between opposing physiological “rein” functions, which buffer an organism in response to an external (often environmental) perturbation. It is proposed that during evolutionary history the pooling of different species' physiological functions in mutualistic symbioses increased the range of suboptimal environmental conditions that could be buffered against—a mutual tolerance benefit sometimes sufficient to outweigh the cost of cooperation. A related argument is that for a small number of biologically-crucial physical variables (i) the difference between organism interiors and the life-environment interface is relatively low, and (ii) the biologically optimum level of that variable is relatively highly conserved across different species. For such variables, symbiosis tends to cause (at a cost) an increase in the number of environmental buffering functions per unit of selection, which in turn biases the overall impact of the biota on the state of the variable towards the biological optimum. When a costly but more temperature-tolerant and physiologically versatile symbiosis between one black (warming) and one white (cooling) “daisy” is added to the (otherwise unaltered) Daisyworld parable, four new results emerge: (1) The extension of habitability to a wider luminosity range, (2) resistance to the impact of “cheater” white daisies with cold optima, that derive short-term benefit from environmental destabilisation, (3) the capacity to maintain residual, oscillatory regulation in response to forcings that change more rapidly than allele frequencies and (crucially) (4) “succession”-type dynamics in which the tolerant symbiosis colonises and to an extent makes habitable an otherwise lifeless environment, but is later displaced by free-living genotypes that have higher local fitness once conditions improve. The final result is arguably analogous to lichen colonisation of the Neoproterozoic land surface, followed by the Phanerozoic rise of vascular plants. Caution is necessary in extrapolating from the Daisyworld parable to real ecology/geochemistry, but sufficiently conserved variables may be water potential, macronutrient stoichiometry and (to a lesser extent) the temperature window for metabolic activity.  相似文献   

4.
Although crucial for the understanding of adaptive evolution, genetically resolved examples of local adaptation are rare. To maximize survival and reproduction in their local environment, hosts should resist their local parasites and pathogens. The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) with its key function in parasite resistance represents an ideal candidate to investigate parasite-mediated local adaptation. Using replicated field mesocosms, stocked with second-generation lab-bred three-spined stickleback hybrids of a lake and a river population, we show local adaptation of MHC genotypes to population-specific parasites, independently of the genetic background. Increased allele divergence of lake MHC genotypes allows lake fish to fight the broad range of lake parasites, whereas more specific river genotypes confer selective advantages against the less diverse river parasites. Hybrids with local MHC genotype gained more body weight and thus higher fitness than those with foreign MHC in either habitat, suggesting the evolutionary significance of locally adapted MHC genotypes.  相似文献   

5.
6.
When alleles have pleiotropic effects on a number of quantitative traits, the degree of dominance between a pair of alleles can be different for each trait. Such trait-specific dominance has been studied previously in models for the maintenance of genetic variation by antagonistic effects of an allele on two fitness components. By generalizing these models to an arbitrary number of fitness components or other phenotypic traits with different degrees of dominance, I show that genetic polymorphism is generally impossible without antagonistic fitness effects of different traits and without trait-specific dominance. I also investigate dominance and pleiotropy from a more long-term evolutionary perspective, allowing for the study of general ecological scenarios, and I discuss the effects of trait-specific dominance on evolutionary stability criteria. When selection is mainly directional and only trait-specific dominance and antagonism cause the emergence of polymorphism, then these polymorphisms can be overtaken by single mutants again, such that they are probably short-lived on an evolutionary time scale. Near evolutionarily singular points where directional selection is absent, trait-specific dominance and overdominance facilitate the emergence of polymorphism and cause evolutionary divergence in some cases. An important outcome of these models is that trait-specific dominance allows for the emergence of genetic polymorphisms without a selective disadvantage for heterozygotes. This removes the scope for the evolution of assortative mate choice and affects dominance modification. Sympatric speciation by disruptive ecological selection requires this heterozygote disadvantage in order to evolve, and therefore it becomes less plausible if the emergence of genetic polymorphism usually occurs via trait-specific dominance and antagonistic effects.  相似文献   

7.
Michod RE  Nedelcu AM  Roze D 《Bio Systems》2003,69(2-3):95-114
The continued well being of evolutionary individuals (units of selection and evolution) depends upon their evolvability, that is their capacity to generate and evolve adaptations at their level of organization, as well as their longer term capacity for diversifying into more complex evolutionary forms. During a transition from a lower- to higher-level individual, such as the transition between unicellular and multicellular organisms, the evolvability of the lower-level (cells) must be restricted, while the evolvability of the new higher-level unit (multicellular organism) must be enhanced. For these reasons, understanding the factors leading to an evolutionary transition should help us to understand the factors underlying the emergence of evolvability of a new evolutionary unit. Cooperation among lower-level units is fundamental to the origin of new functions in the higher-level unit. Cooperation can produce a new more complex evolutionary unit, with the requisite properties of heritable fitness variations, because cooperation trades fitness from a lower-level (the costs of cooperation) to the higher-level (the benefits for the group). For this reason, the evolution of cooperative interactions helps us to understand the origin of new and higher-levels of fitness and organization. As cooperation creates a new level of fitness, it also creates the opportunity for conflict between levels of selection, as deleterious mutants with differing effects at the two levels arise and spread. This conflict can interfere with the evolvability of the higher-level unit, since the lower and higher-levels of selection will often "disagree" on what adaptations are most beneficial to their respective interests. Mediation of this conflict is essential to the emergence of the new evolutionary unit and to its continued evolvability. As an example, we consider the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms and study the evolution of an early-sequestered germ-line in terms of its role in mediating conflict between the two levels of selection, the cell and the cell group. We apply our theoretical framework to the evolution of germ/soma differentiation in the green algal group Volvocales. In the most complex member of the group, Volvox carteri, the potential conflicts among lower-level cells as to the "right" to reproduce the higher-level individual (i.e. the colony) have been mediated by restricting immortality and totipotency to the germ-line. However, this mediation, and the evolution of an early segregated germ-line, was achieved by suppressing mitotic and differentiation capabilities in all post-embryonic cells. By handicapping the soma in this way, individuality is ensured, but the solution has affected the long-term evolvability of this lineage. We think that although conflict mediation is pivotal to the emergence of individuality at the higher-level, the way in which the mediation is achieved can greatly affect the longer-term evolvability of the lineage.  相似文献   

8.
Antagonistic coevolution between hosts and parasites is believed to play a pivotal role in host and parasite population dynamics, the evolutionary maintenance of sex and the evolution of parasite virulence. Furthermore, antagonistic coevolution is believed to be responsible for rapid differentiation of both hosts and parasites between geographically structured populations. Yet empirical evidence for host-parasite antagonistic coevolution, and its impact on between-population genetic divergence, is limited. Here we demonstrate a long-term arms race between the infectivity of a viral parasite (bacteriophage; phage) and the resistance of its bacterial host. Coevolution was largely driven by directional selection, with hosts becoming resistant to a wider range of parasite genotypes and parasites infective to a wider range of host genotypes. Coevolution followed divergent trajectories between replicate communities despite establishment with isogenic bacteria and phage, and resulted in bacteria adapted to their own, compared with other, phage populations.  相似文献   

9.
Laboratory selection experiments play a prominent role in understandingorganismal adaptation. Although bacteria are not yet commonlyused for such experiments, they are well suited for analysesof both the organismic and the genetic basis of adaptation.Bacteria can be maintained in large populations while occupyinglimited laboratory space, have short generation times, are wellcharacterized physiologically, biochemically, and genetically,and are readily frozen and revived from the freezer. In addition,the genomes of many species are completely sequenced and knowledgeof gene function is unparalleled. Here we review general aspectsof selection experiments, the history of using selection experimentsin combination with thermal biology and genomics, and highlightfindings from six lines of Escherichia coli adapted to hightemperature (41.5°C), including changes in organismal fitness,physiological performance, gene complement and gene expression.Our results are an example of the powerful insights that canbe discovered by combining the tools and analyses of many biologicaldisciplines including genomics, evolutionary biology, genetics,and evolutionary physiology.  相似文献   

10.
Antarctic fellfields present organisms with a heterogeneous habitat characterised by a wide variety of environmental stresses. These include low temperatures, limited moisture availability, frequent and often rapid freeze‐thaw and hydration‐dehydration cycles, exposure to high photosynthetic photon flux density and ultraviolet (uv) irradiance, seasonal snow cover, high winds, cryoturbation and, depending on location south of the Antarctic Circle, considerable daylight in summer. Most of these factors vary both predictably and unpredictably in spatial and temporal planes. In response to this adverse environment, fellfield organisms have developed a variety of strategies to overcome physiological stress and to exploit the limited resources available during the short austral growing season. A high degree of synchronisation exists, so that investment in non‐essential activity and adaptations is minimised. Here, we review the combined suites of co‐adapted traits used by different fellfield taxa to achieve energy acquisition, growth and reproduction under adverse levels of two principal limiting factors: low temperatures and the scarcity of water. To this end, a detailed characterisation of the Antarctic fellfield microenvironment is followed by a synthesis of available data on the morphology, physiology, life history and behaviour of successful Antarctic flora and fauna. Tolerance of low temperatures by fellfield organisms is achieved by elevation of standard metabolism, production and accumulation of cryoprotectants, supercooling, melanic pigmentation, behavioural avoidance, compact growth forms and synchronised reproduction and extended life cycles. Low moisture conditions are overcome by dehydration resistance, anhydrobiosis, development of resting stages and by behavioural avoidance of desiccating conditions. Occupancy of the Antarctic fellfield habitat is considered to require the ability to respond rapidly to ephemeral resources and to tolerate severe environmental stresses. During summer, organisms rely on opportunism to maintain a positive energy balance. During winter, resistance adaptations are used to withstand the potentially lethal climate, especially in habitats not protected by snow cover. This deterministic framework has led to the selection of species that are genetically and physiologically pre‐adapted for resource acquisition yet sufficiently robust to withstand cold and desiccation stresses. Non‐adapted taxa fail to become established. Despite the environmental selection pressures, available evidence suggests that colonisation of the fellfield habitat has not required the evolution of any adaptations, only the refinement of those already possessed to an extent by some temperate forms. This has led to the convergence of survival strategies. It is hypothesised that, in the short term, the majority of Antarctic fellfield biota are able to absorb the predicted effects of a changing climate by their high levels of physiological tolerance and life‐cycle flexibility.  相似文献   

11.
The threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) has emerged as an important model organism in evolutionary ecology, largely due to the repeated, parallel evolution of divergent morphotypes found in populations having colonized freshwater habitats. However, morphological divergence following colonization is not a universal phenomenon. We explore this in a large-scale estuarine ecosystem inhabited by two parapatric stickleback demes, each physiologically adapted to divergent osmoregulatory environments (fresh vs. saline waters). Using geometric morphometric analyses of wild-caught individuals, we detected significant differences between demes, in addition to sexual dimorphism, in body shape. However, rearing full-sib families from each deme under controlled, reciprocal salinity conditions revealed no differences between genotypes and highly significant environmental effects. It is also noteworthy that fish from both demes were fully plated, whether found in the wild or reared under reciprocal salinity conditions. Although we found significant heritability for body shape, we also noted significant direct environmental effects for many latent shape variables. Moreover, we found little evidence for diversifying selection acting on body size and shape (Q(ST) ). Nevertheless, uniform compressive variation did exceed neutral expectations, yet despite evidence of both allometry and genetic correlation with body length, we detected no correlated signatures of selection. Taken together, these results suggest that much of the morphological divergence observed in this system is the result of plastic responses to environmental variation rather than adaptive differentiation.  相似文献   

12.
Gamete-recognition proteins have been shown to evolve by positive selection in diverse organism groups, such as marine invertebrates and mammals, although underlying evolutionary mechanisms driving this rapid divergence are poorly understood. However, several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the observed pattern, including different forms of sexual conflict and sperm competition. Because female gametes require more energy to produce than male gametes, female organisms suffer more when fertilisation goes wrong. One process that results in a failed mammalian fertilisation is polyspermy, when >1 sperm fertilises the egg. However in birds, there is no such sexual conflict because multiple sperm typically bind and fuse with the egg. If sexual conflict driven by polyspermy avoidance is important for the evolution of gamete-recognition proteins in vertebrates, we expect to find positive selection in the genes to be less pronounced in birds. We therefore sequenced six genes (ZP1, ZP2, ZP4, ZPAX, CD9, and Acrosin) encoding gamete-recognition proteins in several bird species to test for positive selection. For comparison, we also analysed ortologous sequences in a set of mammalian species. We found no major differences in the occurrence of adaptive evolution and the strength of selection between bird and mammal orthologs. From this we conclude that polyspermy avoidance does not act as the main underlying evolutionary force shaping the rate of evolution in these genes. We discuss other possible processes that could explain positive selection of gamete-recognition proteins in birds and mammals, such as hybridisation avoidance, cryptic female choice, and postcopulatory sperm competition.  相似文献   

13.
Genetic variation is the raw material upon which selection acts. The majority of environmental conditions change over time and therefore may result in variable selective effects. How temporally fluctuating environments impact the distribution of fitness effects and in turn population diversity is an unresolved question in evolutionary biology. Here, we employed continuous culturing using chemostats to establish environments that switch periodically between different nutrient limitations and compared the dynamics of selection to static conditions. We used the pooled Saccharomyces cerevisiae haploid gene deletion collection as a synthetic model for populations comprising thousands of unique genotypes. Using barcode sequencing, we find that static environments are uniquely characterized by a small number of high-fitness genotypes that rapidly dominate the population leading to dramatic decreases in genetic diversity. By contrast, fluctuating environments are enriched in genotypes with neutral fitness effects and an absence of extreme fitness genotypes contributing to the maintenance of genetic diversity. We also identified a unique class of genotypes whose frequencies oscillate sinusoidally with a period matching the environmental fluctuation. Oscillatory behavior corresponds to large differences in short-term fitness that are not observed across long timescales pointing to the importance of balancing selection in maintaining genetic diversity in fluctuating environments. Our results are consistent with a high degree of environmental specificity in the distribution of fitness effects and the combined effects of reduced and balancing selection in maintaining genetic diversity in the presence of variable selection.  相似文献   

14.
Organisms commonly experience significant spatiotemporal variation in their environments. In response to such heterogeneity, different mechanisms may act that enhance ecological performance locally. However, depending on the nature of the mechanism involved, the consequences for populations may differ greatly. Building on a previous model that investigated the conditions under which different adaptive mechanisms (co)evolve, this study compares the ecological and evolutionary population consequences of three very different responses to environmental heterogeneity: matching habitat choice (directed gene flow), adaptive plasticity (associated with random gene flow), and divergent natural selection. Using individual‐based simulations, we show that matching habitat choice can have a greater adaptive potential than plasticity or natural selection: it allows for local adaptation while protecting genetic polymorphism despite global mating or strong environmental changes. Our simulations further reveal that increasing environmental fluctuations and unpredictability generally favor the emergence of specialist genotypes but that matching habitat choice is better at preventing local maladaptation by individuals. This confirms that matching habitat choice can speed up the genetic divergence among populations, cause indirect assortative mating via spatial clustering, and hence even facilitate sympatric speciation. This study highlights the potential importance of directed dispersal in local adaptation and speciation, stresses the difficulty of deriving its operation from nonexperimental observational data alone, and helps define a set of ecological conditions which should favor its emergence and subsequent detection in nature.  相似文献   

15.
One of the primary challenges of evolutionary research is to identify ecological factors that favour reproductive isolation. Therefore, studying partially isolated taxa has the potential to provide novel insight into the mechanisms of evolutionary divergence. Our study utilizes an adaptive colour polymorphism in the arc‐eye hawkfish (Paracirrhites arcatus) to explore the evolution of reproductive barriers in the absence of geographic isolation. Dark and light morphs are ecologically partitioned into basaltic and coral microhabitats a few metres apart. To test whether ecological barriers have reduced gene flow among dark and light phenotypes, we evaluated genetic variation at 30 microsatellite loci and a nuclear exon (Mc1r) associated with melanistic coloration. We report low, but significant microsatellite differentiation among colour morphs and stronger divergence in the coding region of Mc1r indicating signatures of selection. Critically, we observed greater genetic divergence between colour morphs on the same reefs than that between the same morphs in different geographic locations. We hypothesize that adaptation to the contrasting microhabitats is overriding gene flow and is responsible for the partial reproductive isolation observed between sympatric colour morphs. Combined with complementary studies of hawkfish ecology and behaviour, these genetic results indicate an ecological barrier to gene flow initiated by habitat selection and enhanced by assortative mating. Hence, the arc‐eye hawkfish fulfil theoretical expectations for the earliest phase of speciation with gene flow.  相似文献   

16.
It is still debated whether main individual fitness differences in natural populations can be attributed to genome-wide effects or to particular loci of outstanding functional importance such as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). In a long-term monitoring project on Galápagos sea lions (Zalophus wollebaeki), we collected comprehensive fitness and mating data for a total of 506 individuals. Controlling for genome-wide inbreeding, we find strong associations between the MHC locus and nearly all fitness traits. The effect was mainly attributable to MHC sequence divergence and could be decomposed into contributions of own and maternal genotypes. In consequence, the population seems to have evolved a pool of highly divergent alleles conveying near-optimal MHC divergence even by random mating. Our results demonstrate that a single locus can significantly contribute to fitness in the wild and provide conclusive evidence for the ‘divergent allele advantage’ hypothesis, a special form of balancing selection with interesting evolutionary implications.  相似文献   

17.
Immune function is likely to be a critical determinant of an organism's fitness, yet most natural animal and plant populations exhibit tremendous genetic variation for immune traits. Accumulating evidence suggests that environmental heterogeneity may retard the long-term efficiency of natural selection and even maintain polymorphism, provided alternative host genotypes are favoured under different environmental conditions. 'Environment' in this context refers to abiotic factors such as ambient temperature or availability of nutrient resources, genetic diversity of pathogens or competing physiological demands on the host. These factors are generally controlled in laboratory experiments measuring immune performance, but variation in them is likely to be very important in the evolution of resistance to infection. Here, we review some of the literature emphasizing the complexity of natural selection on immunity. Our aim is to describe how environmental and genetic heterogeneities, often excluded from experimentation as 'noise', may determine the evolutionary potential of populations or the potential for interacting species to coevolve.  相似文献   

18.
Sex-antagonistic (SA) selection has major evolutionary consequences: it can drive genomic change, constrain adaptation, and maintain genetic variation for fitness. The recombining (or pseudoautosomal) regions of sex chromosomes are a promising setting in which to study SA selection because they tend to accumulate SA polymorphisms and because recombination allows us to deploy the tools of molecular evolution to locate targets of SA selection and quantify evolutionary forces. Here we use coalescent models to characterize the patterns of polymorphism expected within and divergence between recombining X and Y (or Z and W) sex chromosomes. SA selection generates peaks of divergence between X and Y that can extend substantial distances away from the targets of selection. Linkage disequilibrium between neutral sites is also inflated. We show how the pattern of divergence is altered when the SA polymorphism or the sex-determining region was recently established. We use data from the flowering plant Silene latifolia to illustrate how the strength of SA selection might be quantified using molecular data from recombining sex chromosomes.  相似文献   

19.
Functional information means an encoded network of functions in living organisms from molecular signaling pathways to an organism’s behavior. It is represented by two components: code and an interpretation system, which together form a self-sustaining semantic closure. Semantic closure allows some freedom between components because small variations of the code are still interpretable. The interpretation system consists of inference rules that control the correspondence between the code and the function (phenotype) and determines the shape of the fitness landscape. The utility factor operates at multiple time scales: short-term selection drives evolution towards higher survival and reproduction rate within a given fitness landscape, and long-term selection favors those fitness landscapes that support adaptability and lead to evolutionary expansion of certain lineages. Inference rules make short-term selection possible by shaping the fitness landscape and defining possible directions of evolution, but they are under control of the long-term selection of lineages. Communication normally occurs within a set of agents with compatible interpretation systems, which I call communication system. Functional information cannot be directly transferred between communication systems with incompatible inference rules. Each biological species is a genetic communication system that carries unique functional information together with inference rules that determine evolutionary directions and constraints. This view of the relation between utility and inference can resolve the conflict between realism/positivism and pragmatism. Realism overemphasizes the role of inference in evolution of human knowledge because it assumes that logic is embedded in reality. Pragmatism substitutes usefulness for truth and therefore ignores the advantage of inference. The proposed concept of evolutionary pragmatism rejects the idea that logic is embedded in reality; instead, inference rules are constructed within each communication system to represent reality, and they evolve towards higher adaptability on a long time scale.  相似文献   

20.
Polymorphism has been shown to be possible but unlikely with a different selection intensity in each of several niches, or with varying selection intensity during successive generations. We show that polymorphism is likely with the combination of several niches and several seasons. The model contains two seasons, three habitats, many generations per season, habitat selection, positive assortative mating, movement between habitats, and different fitnesses of each genotype in each habitat. It is a stepping stone model with differential migration of genotypes. It is applied to the polymorphism of the indoor and the outdoor genotypes of the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti. Matrix methods and simple models of population genetics comprised the computer model. Polymorphism is likely with most reasonable values of the parameters. Fitnesses and rate of movement are the most important parameters influencing the character and likelihood of polymorphism; habitat selection and positive assortative mating have much less effect. The model indicates that polymorphism of A. aegypti in east Africa results from: (1) the presence of a dry season when breeding occurs only in the human habitat; (2) greater fitness of the indoor ecotype in the human habitat and of the outdoor ecotype in the natural habitat; and (3) less than random movement between human and natural habitats.  相似文献   

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