John W. Benning, Eliza I. Clark, Ruth A. Hufbauer, Christopher Weiss-Lehman
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Rapid evolution of increased dispersal at the edge of a range expansion can accelerate invasions. However, populations expanding across environmental gradients often face challenging environments that reduce fitness of dispersing individuals. We used an eco-evolutionary model to explore how environmental gradients influence dispersal evolution and, in turn, modulate the speed and predictability of invasion. Environmental gradients opposed evolution of increased dispersal during invasion, even leading to evolution of reduced dispersal along steeper gradients. Counterintuitively, reduced dispersal could allow for faster expansion by minimizing maladaptive gene flow and facilitating adaptation. While dispersal evolution across homogenous landscapes increased both the mean and variance of expansion speed, these increases were greatly dampened by environmental gradients. We illustrate our model's potential application to prediction and management of invasions by parameterizing it with data from a recent invertebrate range expansion. Overall, we find that environmental gradients strongly modulate the effect of dispersal evolution on invasion trajectories.
期刊介绍:
Ecology Letters serves as a platform for the rapid publication of innovative research in ecology. It considers manuscripts across all taxa, biomes, and geographic regions, prioritizing papers that investigate clearly stated hypotheses. The journal publishes concise papers of high originality and general interest, contributing to new developments in ecology. Purely descriptive papers and those that only confirm or extend previous results are discouraged.