EEP research demonstrated that even optimizing selection – generally believed by experts to help species survive environmental changes – can have the diametrically opposite effect of causing extinctions [1]. A complementary study showed that the seemingly cooperative process of conspecifics aggregating in groups to jointly overcome environmental challenges can spiral out of control and cause runaway evolution that eventually results in extinction [2].
Under the right conditions, eco-evolutionary dynamics help mitigate the impacts of environmental change and increase the global species pool through processes of diversification and speciation. Several studies in 2013 aimed to identify such conditions.
Figure 1. A realistic eco-physiological model is used to uncover the evolutionary history of a pair of coregonid fishes in Lake Stechlin, Germany. Speciation of a single ancestor gives rise to two new species adapted to different temperatures.
EEP’s research further elucidated how individual behavior and individual traits affect the eco-evolutionary dynamics of ecological populations and communities.
References
[1] Parvinen K & Dieckmann U (2013). Self-extinction through optimizing selection. Journal of Theoretical Biology 333: 1–9.
[2] Nonaka E, Parvinen K & Brännström Å (2013). Evolutionary suicide as a consequence of runaway selection for greater aggregation tendency. Journal of Theoretical Biology 317: 96–104.
[3] Rettelbach A, Kopp M, Dieckmann U & Hermisson J (2013). Three modes of adaptive speciation in spatially structured populations. American Naturalist 182: E215–E234.
[4] Abbott R, Albach D, Ansell S, Arntzen JW, Baird SJE, Bierne N, Boughman JW, Brelsford A, Buerkle CA, Buggs R, Butlin RK, Dieckmann U, Eroukhmanoff F, Grill A, Cahan SH, Hermansen JS, Hewitt G, Hudson AG, Jiggins C, Jones J, Keller B, Marczewski T, Mallet J, Martinez-Rodriguez P, Most M, Mullen S, Nichols R, Nolte AW, Parisod C, Pfennig K, Rice AM, Ritchie MG, Seifert B, Smadja CM, Stelkens R, Szymura JM, Vainola R, Wolf JBW & Zinner D (2013). Hybridization and speciation. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 26: 229–246.
[5] Seehausen O, Butlin RK, Keller I, Wagner C, Boughman J, Hohenlohe P, Peichel C, Saetre GP, Bank C, Brännström Å, Brelsford A, Clarkson C, Eroukhmanoff F, Feder JL, Fischer MC, Foote AD, Franchini P, Jiggins CD, Jones FC, Lindholm AK, Lucek K, Maan ME, Marques DA, Martin SH, Matthews B, Meier JI, Möst M, Nachman MW, Nonaka E, Peichel CL, Rennison DJ, Schwarzer J, Wagner CE, Watson ET, Westram AM & Widmer A (2014). Genomics and the origin of species. Nature Review Genetics 15: 176–192.
[6] Haller BC, Mazzucco R & Dieckmann U (2013). Evolutionary branching in complex landscapes. American Naturalist 182: E127–E141.
[7] Ohlberger J, Brännström Å & Dieckmann U (2013). Adaptive phenotypic diversification along a temperature-depth gradient. American Naturalist 182: 359–373.
[8] Yamamichi M & Sasaki A (2013). Single-gene speciation with pleiotropy: Effects of allele dominance population size and delayed inheritance. Evolution 67: 2011–2023.
[9] Landi P, Dercole F & Rinaldi S (2013). Branching scenarios in eco-evolutionary prey-predator models. SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics 73: 1634–1658.
[10] Sjödin H, Brännström Å, Söderquist M & Englund G (2014). Population-level consequences of heterospecific density-dependent movements in predator-prey systems. Journal of Theoretical Biology 342: 93–106.
[11] Yamamichi M, Yoshida T & Sasaki A (2014). Timing and propagule size of invasion determine its success by a time-varying threshold of demographic regime shift. Ecology, in press. doi: 10.1890/13-1527.1.
[12] Fischer B, van Doorn GS, Dieckmann U & Taborsky B (2014). The evolution of age-dependent plasticity. American Naturalist 183: 108–125.
[13] Nurmi T & Parvinen K (2013). Evolution of specialization under non-equilibrium population dynamics. Journal of Theoretical Biology 321: 63–77.
[14] van Leeuwen E, Brännström Å, Jansen VAA, Dieckmann U & Rossberg AG (2013). A generalized functional response for predators that switch between multiple prey species. Journal of Theoretical Biology 328: 89–98.
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Principal Research Scholar Exploratory Modeling of Human-natural Systems Research Group - Advancing Systems Analysis Program
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