Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (156)
- Postprint (14)
- Conference Proceeding (4)
- Review (3)
- Other (2)
- Part of a Book (1)
Keywords
- Individual-based model (5)
- Individual-based models (5)
- climate change (5)
- plant functional trait (5)
- Climate change (4)
- Non-target terrestrial plants (3)
- Plant community model (3)
- Plant functional types (3)
- biodiversity (3)
- functional traits (3)
- hoverflies (3)
- intraspecific trait variation (3)
- landscape homogenization (3)
- syrphids (3)
- wild bees (3)
- Beneficial mutations (2)
- Biodiversity (2)
- Coexistence (2)
- Community-level effects (2)
- Directional climate change (2)
- Dry land degradation (2)
- Dynamic vegetation models (2)
- East Africa (2)
- Evolution (2)
- Fire (2)
- Fragmentation (2)
- Functional types (2)
- Habitat fragmentation (2)
- Herbicide risk assessment (2)
- IBM (2)
- Individual-based modeling (2)
- LMA (2)
- Landscape of fear (2)
- Limiting similarity (2)
- Mutation rate (2)
- Mutator locus (2)
- Plant height (2)
- Predator-prey interactions (2)
- Rangeland management (2)
- Recombination (2)
- Simulation model (2)
- agricultural landscape (2)
- behavioral plasticity (2)
- buffer zones (2)
- coexistence (2)
- community model (2)
- community theory (2)
- concepts (2)
- coviability analysis (2)
- demographic noise (2)
- developmental canalization (2)
- ecosystem services provisioning (2)
- ecosystems (2)
- environmental change (2)
- environmental noise (2)
- genetic accommodation (2)
- heterogeneity (2)
- individual-based modeling (2)
- limits (2)
- macroecology (2)
- management (2)
- many-to-one genotype–phenotype map (2)
- modern coexistence theory (2)
- niche width (2)
- noise color (2)
- phenotypic plasticity (2)
- population viability analysis (2)
- reaction norms (2)
- resilience (2)
- scale-dependence (2)
- scale-dependency (2)
- sexual species (2)
- shrub encroachment (2)
- solitary bees (2)
- spatially explicit (2)
- species abundance (2)
- stochastic fluctuations (2)
- trait-environment relationship (2)
- (Semi-natural) Grasslands (1)
- 3D-acceleration sensor (1)
- Abandonment (1)
- Above-/below-ground interactions (1)
- Acacia mellifera (1)
- Active movement (1)
- Adaptation options (1)
- Agricultural landscapes (1)
- Agriotes Ustulatus (1)
- Allometry (1)
- Anthropogenic biome (1)
- Aridity gradient (1)
- Baltic Sea (1)
- Bayesian statistics (1)
- Below-ground resources (1)
- Belowground herbivory (1)
- Bet-hedging germination (1)
- Biodiversity Exploratories (1)
- Biodiversity experiments (1)
- Biodiversity theory (1)
- Biological conservation (1)
- Biome (1)
- Biome shifts (1)
- Biomization (1)
- Birds (1)
- Body size (1)
- Boosted regression tree (1)
- Brachypodium hybridum (1)
- Bromus hordeaceus (1)
- Bush encroachment (1)
- CART (1)
- CFR Proteaceae (1)
- CO2 increase (1)
- Ciconia ciconia (1)
- Clonal plants (1)
- Co-existence (1)
- Coexistence mechanisms (1)
- Community (1)
- Community assembly (1)
- Competition-colonization (1)
- Competitive hierarchies (1)
- Connectivity (1)
- Conservation biogeography (1)
- Conservation management (1)
- Decision-making (1)
- Density dependence (1)
- Diabrotica Virgifera Virgifera (1)
- Diversity (1)
- Dormancy (1)
- Drought stress (1)
- Drought-stress (1)
- Dynamic landscapes (1)
- Eco-evolutionary dynamics (1)
- Ecohydrological modeling (1)
- Ecological classification (1)
- Ecological health (1)
- Ecological risk assessment (1)
- Ecology (1)
- Ecosystem functions and services (1)
- Ecotoxicology (1)
- Effect group (1)
- Emergence time (1)
- Environmental filtering (1)
- Environmental heterogeneity (1)
- Environmental relationships (1)
- Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) (1)
- European Vegetation Archive (EVA) (1)
- Eutrophication (1)
- Fauna (1)
- Field margins (1)
- Filamentous fungi (1)
- Flora (1)
- Foraging (1)
- Foraging movement (1)
- Forecasting (1)
- Forest change (1)
- Fractal landscapes (1)
- Functional ecology (1)
- Functional trait (1)
- Functional traits (1)
- Functional type (1)
- Fungal foraging (1)
- Fungal highways (1)
- Fungal space searching algorithms (1)
- Global change (1)
- GrassPlot (1)
- Grassland (1)
- Grazing (1)
- Greenhouse experiment (1)
- Guild (1)
- Habitat filtering (1)
- Habitat gradients (1)
- Habitat heterogeneity (1)
- Habitat loss (1)
- Habitat management (1)
- Herbicide (1)
- Herbicide exposure (1)
- Heterogeneity species diversity relationship (1)
- Hierarchical partitioning of variance (1)
- Holocene (1)
- Home range (1)
- Hyperspectral remote sensing (1)
- IBC-grass model (1)
- Indicators (1)
- Individual based simulation model (1)
- Interdisciplinarity (1)
- Interference competition (1)
- Intermediate disturbance hypothesis (1)
- Kettle holes (1)
- Kriging (1)
- Land reform (1)
- Land use intensity (1)
- Land-use intensity (1)
- Landscape (1)
- Larix gmelinii (1)
- Last glacial maximum (1)
- Late Cenozoic (1)
- Leaf area index (1)
- Local adaptation (1)
- Locomotion costs (1)
- Lolium perenne (1)
- Long-distance seed dispersal (1)
- Matrix vegetation (1)
- Metapopulation dynamics (1)
- Microbial community (1)
- Mid-Holocene (1)
- Middle East (1)
- Military areas (1)
- Military conversion (1)
- Modeling (1)
- Modular organisms (1)
- Monitoring programmes (1)
- Multi-grain sampling (1)
- Natura 2000 (1)
- Natura 2000 monitoring (1)
- Nature conservation management (1)
- Nontarget terrestrial plants (1)
- Null models (1)
- ODD model description (1)
- ODD protocol (1)
- ODE model (1)
- PSI (plastic sphere of influence) (1)
- Palaeovegetation (1)
- Permafrost ecosystem (1)
- Phenotypic plasticity (1)
- Plant community (1)
- Plant community modelling (1)
- Plant diversity (1)
- Plant functional trait (1)
- Plant functional traits (1)
- Plant reproduction (1)
- Pollen dataset (1)
- Rainfall gradient (1)
- Rainfall variability (1)
- Regression tree analysis (1)
- Resistance (1)
- Response group (1)
- Riskspreading (1)
- Role-play (1)
- SLA (1)
- Savanna-grassland bistability (1)
- Scale-dependence (1)
- Scirpus maritimus (1)
- Seed competition (1)
- Seed dispersal by wind (1)
- Seed immigration (1)
- Seed mass (1)
- Seed number (1)
- Semi-arid savanna (1)
- Shrub encroachment (1)
- Simulation experiment (1)
- Slime molds (1)
- Slope exposure (1)
- Southern Africa (1)
- Spatially explicit model (1)
- Spatially explicit modelling (1)
- Species co-existence (1)
- Species coexistence (1)
- Species conservation (1)
- Species density (1)
- Species endangerment (1)
- Species frequency (1)
- Specific leaf area (SLA) (1)
- Stochastic differential equations (1)
- Temporal spread (1)
- Time-lag effects (1)
- Trait selection (1)
- Trait-based approach (1)
- Trait-environment relationship (1)
- Uniform sampling (1)
- Vegetation continuum (1)
- Vulnerability (1)
- Wireworms (1)
- adaptation of conservation strategies (1)
- adaptive management (1)
- alpine grassland degradation (1)
- animal movement (1)
- arable land (1)
- asymmetry of competition (1)
- atlas data (1)
- attraction-avoidance (1)
- biodiversity conservation (1)
- biodiversity refugia (1)
- biogeography (1)
- biotelemetry (1)
- butterflies (1)
- citizen science programme (1)
- closed forest (1)
- community assembly (1)
- community dynamics (1)
- competition (1)
- competition intensity (1)
- competition resistance trade-off (1)
- conservation biology (1)
- conservation planning (1)
- conservation targets (1)
- count data (1)
- demographic bottleneck (1)
- demographic properties (1)
- dendroecology (1)
- density dependence (1)
- ecohydrology (1)
- european flora (1)
- experimental plant communities (1)
- extinction debt (1)
- fine-scale interactions (1)
- fire frequency (1)
- flight (1)
- flight efficiency (1)
- forest change (1)
- functional types (1)
- grassland diversity (1)
- grassland vegetation (1)
- grid-based simulation model (1)
- habitat fragmentation (1)
- habitat islands (1)
- habitat loss (1)
- herd composition (1)
- hierarchical framework (1)
- home range selection (1)
- hybrid model (1)
- hyper spectral (1)
- importance (1)
- individual based modeling (1)
- individual variability (1)
- individual-based model (1)
- intensity vs (1)
- inter-specific interactions (1)
- intermediate disturbance hypothesis (1)
- interval squeeze (1)
- island biogeography theory (1)
- island ecology (1)
- isolation (1)
- juvenile mortality (1)
- kernel density estimation (1)
- land-use intensity (1)
- landscape genetics (1)
- latitude (1)
- life history (1)
- livestock (1)
- local abundances (1)
- local convex hull (1)
- long distance movement (1)
- long-term data (1)
- mediterranean-type ecosystem (1)
- migration (1)
- minimum convex polygon (1)
- mobile links (1)
- model (1)
- model coupling (1)
- morphological plasticity (1)
- movement behaviour (1)
- multi-taxon (1)
- nested plot (1)
- nutrient analogues (1)
- occurrence estimates (1)
- pace-of-life syndrome (1)
- personality (1)
- plant communities (1)
- plant density (1)
- plant-plant interactions (1)
- pollination (1)
- population-dynamics (1)
- precipitation pattern (1)
- process-based range models (1)
- process-based simulation model (1)
- range distribution (1)
- range filling (1)
- range size (1)
- rangeland management (1)
- recruitment (1)
- remote sensing (1)
- resource selection (1)
- root and shoot competition (1)
- sPlot (1)
- savanna (1)
- savanna resilience (1)
- shrubline (1)
- simulation model (1)
- size dependent mortality (1)
- size distribution (1)
- social environment (1)
- soil moisture (1)
- space use (1)
- spatial-distribution (1)
- spatially explicit model (1)
- species assemblies (1)
- species coexistence (1)
- species density (1)
- species distribution models (1)
- species-area relationship (1)
- species-area relationship (SAR) (1)
- state-space model (1)
- step-selection function (1)
- stocking capacity (1)
- sustainable rangeland management (1)
- telemetry (1)
- threats to biological diversity (1)
- topography (1)
- tracking data (1)
- trait (1)
- transient dynamics (1)
- tree death (1)
- tundra (1)
- variation (1)
- vegetation model (1)
- vegetation-plot database (1)
- white stork (1)
- wireworms coloptera (1)
- zone-of-influence model (1)
Institute
- Institut für Biochemie und Biologie (153)
- Institut für Geowissenschaften (14)
- Extern (6)
- Institut für Umweltwissenschaften und Geographie (5)
- Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Musterdynamik und Angewandte Fernerkundung (3)
- Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät (3)
- Institut für Physik und Astronomie (2)
- Referat für Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit (2)
- Zentrum für Umweltwissenschaften (2)
- Institut für Chemie (1)
Question: Is there a relationship between size and death in the Iona-lived, deep-rooted tree, Acacia erioloba, in a semi-arid savanna? What is the size-class distribution of A. erioloba mortality? Does the mortality distribution differ from total tree size distribution? Does A. erioloba mortality distribution match the mortality distributions recorded thus far in other environments? Location: Dronfield Ranch, near Kimberley, Kalahari, South Africa. Methods: A combination of aerial photographs and a satellite image covering 61 year was used to provide long-term spatial data on mortality. We used aerial photographs of the study area from 1940, 1964, 1984, 1993 and a satellite image from 2001 to follow three plots covering 510 ha. We were able to identify and individually follow ca. 3000 individual trees from 1940 till 2001. Results: The total number of trees increased over time. No relationship between total number of trees and mean tree size was detected. There were no trends over time in total number of deaths per plot or in size distributions of dead trees. Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests showed no differences in size class distributions for living trees through time. The size distribution of dead trees was significantly different from the size distribution of all trees present on the plots. Overall, the number of dead trees was low in small size classes, reached a peak value when canopy area was 20 - 30 m(2), and declined in lamer size-classes. Mortality as a ratio of dead vs. total trees peaked at intermediate canopy sizes too. Conclusion: A. erioloba mortality was size-dependent, peaking at intermediate sizes. The mortality distribution differs from all other tree mortality distributions recorded thus far. We suggest that a possible mechanism for this unusual mortality distribution is intraspecific competition for water in this semi-arid environment.
The El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the main driver of the interannual variability in eastern African rainfall, with a significant impact on vegetation and agriculture and dire consequences for food and social security. In this study, we identify and quantify the ENSO contribution to the eastern African rainfall variability to forecast future eastern African vegetation response to rainfall variability related to a predicted intensified ENSO. To differentiate the vegetation variability due to ENSO, we removed the ENSO signal from the climate data using empirical orthogonal teleconnection (EOT) analysis. Then, we simulated the ecosystem carbon and water fluxes under the historical climate without components related to ENSO teleconnections. We found ENSO-driven patterns in vegetation response and confirmed that EOT analysis can successfully produce coupled tropical Pacific sea surface temperature-eastern African rainfall teleconnection from observed datasets. We further simulated eastern African vegetation response under future climate change as it is projected by climate models and under future climate change combined with a predicted increased ENSO intensity. Our EOT analysis highlights that climate simulations are still not good at capturing rainfall variability due to ENSO, and as we show here the future vegetation would be different from what is simulated under these climate model outputs lacking accurate ENSO contribution. We simulated considerable differences in eastern African vegetation growth under the influence of an intensified ENSO regime which will bring further environmental stress to a region with a reduced capacity to adapt effects of global climate change and food security.
Movement ecology aims to provide common terminology and an integrative framework of movement research across all groups of organisms. Yet such work has focused on unitary organisms so far, and thus the important group of filamentous fungi has not been considered in this context. With the exception of spore dispersal, movement in filamentous fungi has not been integrated into the movement ecology field. At the same time, the field of fungal ecology has been advancing research on topics like informed growth, mycelial translocations, or fungal highways using its own terminology and frameworks, overlooking the theoretical developments within movement ecology. We provide a conceptual and terminological framework for interdisciplinary collaboration between these two disciplines, and show how both can benefit from closer links: We show how placing the knowledge from fungal biology and ecology into the framework of movement ecology can inspire both theoretical and empirical developments, eventually leading towards a better understanding of fungal ecology and community assembly. Conversely, by a greater focus on movement specificities of filamentous fungi, movement ecology stands to benefit from the challenge to evolve its concepts and terminology towards even greater universality. We show how our concept can be applied for other modular organisms (such as clonal plants and slime molds), and how this can lead towards comparative studies with the relationship between organismal movement and ecosystems in the focus.
Wild bee species are important pollinators in agricultural landscapes. However, population decline was reported over the last decades and is still ongoing. While agricultural intensification is a major driver of the rapid loss of pollinating species, transition zones between arable fields and forest or grassland patches, i.e., agricultural buffer zones, are frequently mentioned as suitable mitigation measures to support wild bee populations and other pollinator species. Despite the reported general positive effect, it remains unclear which amount of buffer zones is needed to ensure a sustainable and permanent impact for enhancing bee diversity and abundance. To address this question at a pollinator community level, we implemented a process-based, spatially explicit simulation model of functional bee diversity dynamics in an agricultural landscape. More specifically, we introduced a variable amount of agricultural buffer zones (ABZs) at the transition of arable to grassland, or arable to forest patches to analyze the impact on bee functional diversity and functional richness. We focused our study on solitary bees in a typical agricultural area in the Northeast of Germany. Our results showed positive effects with at least 25% of virtually implemented agricultural buffer zones. However, higher amounts of ABZs of at least 75% should be considered to ensure a sufficient increase in Shannon diversity and decrease in quasi-extinction risks. These high amounts of ABZs represent effective conservation measures to safeguard the stability of pollination services provided by solitary bee species. As the model structure can be easily adapted to other mobile species in agricultural landscapes, our community approach offers the chance to compare the effectiveness of conservation measures also for other pollinator communities in future.
Resilience is a major research focus covering a wide range of topics from biodiversity conservation to ecosystem (service) management. Model simulations can assess the resilience of, for example, plant species, measured as the return time to conditions prior to a disturbance. This requires process-based models (PBM) that implement relevant processes such as regeneration and reproduction and thus successfully reproduce transient dynamics after disturbances. Such models are often complex and thus limited to either short-term or small-scale applications, whereas many research questions require species predictions across larger spatial and temporal scales. We suggest a framework to couple a PBM and a statistical species distribution model (SDM), which transfers the results of a resilience analysis by the PBM to SDM predictions. The resulting hybrid model combines the advantages of both approaches: the convenient applicability of SDMs and the relevant process detail of PBMs in abrupt environmental change situations. First, we simulate dynamic responses of species communities to a disturbance event with a PBM. We aggregate the response behavior in two resilience metrics: return time and amplitude of the response peak. These metrics are then used to complement long-term SDM projections with dynamic short-term responses to disturbance. To illustrate our framework, we investigate the effect of abrupt short-term groundwater level and salinity changes on coastal vegetation at the German Baltic Sea. We found two example species to be largely resilient, and, consequently, modifications of SDM predictions consisted mostly of smoothing out peaks in the occurrence probability that were not confirmed by the PBM. Discrepancies between SDM- and PBM-predicted species responses were caused by community dynamics simulated in the PBM and absent from the SDM. Although demonstrated with boosted regression trees (SDM) and an existing individual-based model, IBC-grass (PBM), our flexible framework can easily be applied to other PBM and SDM types, as well as other definitions of short-term disturbances or long-term trends of environmental change. Thus, our framework allows accounting for biological feedbacks in the response to short- and long-term environmental changes as a major advancement in predictive vegetation modeling.
Germination marks a critical transition in plant life that is prone to high mortality. Strong selection pressure is therefore expected to finely tune it to environmental conditions. Our study on the common Mediterranean grass Brachypodium hybridum assessed whether germination behavior changes systematically along a steep natural rainfall gradient ranging from harsh desert to rather mild mesic-Mediterranean conditions, We specifically tested hypotheses that germination behavior confers greater risk-spreading in populations from drier, unpredictable environments, and that seeds from wetter populations are better competitors. In 14 populations (spanning 114-954 mm annual rainfall) we assessed three alternative key parameters of germination in a greenhouse experiment: between-year dormancy, days to emergence within a season, and temporal spread. Addition of neighbor seeds accounted for competition as another crucial environmental factor. In six of the 14 populations, we also compared seeds originating from corresponding north (more mesic) and south (more arid) exposed hill slopes to test whether germination patterns along the large-scale rainfall gradient are paralleled at this smaller scale. B. hybridum exhibited generally high germination fractions and rapid emergence with very little temporal spread, indicating overall little risk-spreading germination. Surprisingly, none of the three parameters changed systematically with increasing aridity, neither at large scale along the rainfall gradient nor at small scale between north and south exposures. Neighbor seeds, however, mildly suppressed germination. Germination of neighbor seeds, in turn, was more strongly suppressed by B. hybridum seeds from drier populations, and this effect was stronger for forb than for grass neighbor species. Our results provide strong evidence that increased risk-spreading germination is not a universal, essential strategy to persist in increasingly dry, unpredictable environments. They also highlight that competition with neighbors occurs even at the earliest plant life stage. Since neighbor effects were species-specific, competition among seeds can affect community composition at later plant stages.
A challenge for eco-evolutionary research is to better understand the effect of climate and landscape changes on species and their distribution. Populations of species can respond to changes in their environment through local genetic adaptation or plasticity, dispersal, or local extinction. The individual-based modeling (IBM) approach has been repeatedly applied to assess organismic responses to environmental changes. IBMs simulate emerging adaptive behaviors from the basic entities upon which both ecological and evolutionary mechanisms act. The objective of this review is to summarize the state of the art of eco-evolutionary IBMs and to explore to what degree they already address the key responses of organisms to environmental change. In this, we identify promising approaches and potential knowledge gaps in the implementation of eco-evolutionary mechanisms to motivate future research. Using mainly the ISI Web of Science, we reveal that most of the progress in eco-evolutionary IBMs in the last decades was achieved for genetic adaptation to novel local environmental conditions. There is, however, not a single eco-evolutionary IBM addressing the three potential adaptive responses simultaneously. Additionally, IBMs implementing adaptive phenotypic plasticity are rare. Most commonly, plasticity was implemented as random noise or reaction norms. Our review further identifies a current lack of models where plasticity is an evolving trait. Future eco-evolutionary models should consider dispersal and plasticity as evolving traits with their associated costs and benefits. Such an integrated approach could help to identify conditions promoting population persistence depending on the life history strategy of organisms and the environment they experience.
Background
Organisms are expected to respond to changing environmental conditions through local adaptation, range shift or local extinction. The process of local adaptation can occur by genetic changes or phenotypic plasticity, and becomes especially relevant when dispersal abilities or possibilities are somehow constrained. For genetic changes to occur, mutations are the ultimate source of variation and the mutation rate in terms of a mutator locus can be subject to evolutionary change. Recent findings suggest that the evolution of the mutation rate in a sexual species can advance invasion speed and promote adaptation to novel environmental conditions. Following this idea, this work uses an individual-based model approach to investigate if the mutation rate can also evolve in a sexual species experiencing different conditions of directional climate change, under different scenarios of colored stochastic environmental noise, probability of recombination and of beneficial mutations. The color of the noise mimicked investigating the evolutionary dynamics of the mutation rate in different habitats.
Results
The results suggest that the mutation rate in a sexual species experiencing directional climate change scenarios can evolve and reach relatively high values mainly under conditions of complete linkage of the mutator locus and the adaptation locus. In contrast, when they are unlinked, the mutation rate can slightly increase only under scenarios where at least 50% of arising mutations are beneficial and the rate of environmental change is relatively fast. This result is robust under different scenarios of stochastic environmental noise, which supports the observation of no systematic variation in the mutation rate among organisms experiencing different habitats.
Conclusions
Given that 50% beneficial mutations may be an unrealistic assumption, and that recombination is ubiquitous in sexual species, the evolution of an elevated mutation rate in a sexual species experiencing directional climate change might be rather unlikely. Furthermore, when the percentage of beneficial mutations and the population size are small, sexual species (especially multicellular ones) producing few offspring may be expected to react to changing environments not by adaptive genetic change, but mainly through plasticity. Without the ability for a plastic response, such species may become – at least locally – extinct.
Populations adapt to novel environmental conditions by genetic changes or phenotypic plasticity. Plastic responses are generally faster and can buffer fitness losses under variable conditions. Plasticity is typically modeled as random noise and linear reaction norms that assume simple one-to- one genotype–phenotype maps and no limits to the phenotypic response. Most studies on plasticity have focused on its effect on population viability. However, it is not clear, whether the advantage of plasticity depends solely on environmental fluctuations or also on the genetic and demographic properties (life histories) of populations. Here we present an individual-based model and study the relative importance of adaptive and nonadaptive plasticity for populations of sexual species with different life histories experiencing directional stochastic climate change. Environmental fluctuations were simulated using differentially autocorrelated climatic stochasticity or noise color, and scenarios of directiona
climate change. Nonadaptive plasticity was simulated as a random environmental effect on trait development, while adaptive plasticity as a linear, saturating, or sinusoidal reaction norm. The last two imposed limits to the plastic response and emphasized flexible interactions of the genotype with the environment. Interestingly, this assumption led to (a) smaller phenotypic than genotypic variance in the population (many-to- one genotype–phenotype map) and the coexistence of polymorphisms, and (b) the maintenance of higher genetic variation—compared to linear reaction norms and genetic determinism—even when the population was exposed to a constant environment for several generations. Limits to plasticity led to genetic accommodation, when costs were negligible, and to the appearance of cryptic variation when limits were exceeded. We found that adaptive plasticity promoted population persistence under red environmental noise and was particularly important for life histories with low fecundity. Populations produing more offspring could cope with environmental fluctuations solely by genetic changes or random plasticity, unless environmental change was too fast.
Background
Organisms are expected to respond to changing environmental conditions through local adaptation, range shift or local extinction. The process of local adaptation can occur by genetic changes or phenotypic plasticity, and becomes especially relevant when dispersal abilities or possibilities are somehow constrained. For genetic changes to occur, mutations are the ultimate source of variation and the mutation rate in terms of a mutator locus can be subject to evolutionary change. Recent findings suggest that the evolution of the mutation rate in a sexual species can advance invasion speed and promote adaptation to novel environmental conditions. Following this idea, this work uses an individual-based model approach to investigate if the mutation rate can also evolve in a sexual species experiencing different conditions of directional climate change, under different scenarios of colored stochastic environmental noise, probability of recombination and of beneficial mutations. The color of the noise mimicked investigating the evolutionary dynamics of the mutation rate in different habitats.
Results
The results suggest that the mutation rate in a sexual species experiencing directional climate change scenarios can evolve and reach relatively high values mainly under conditions of complete linkage of the mutator locus and the adaptation locus. In contrast, when they are unlinked, the mutation rate can slightly increase only under scenarios where at least 50% of arising mutations are beneficial and the rate of environmental change is relatively fast. This result is robust under different scenarios of stochastic environmental noise, which supports the observation of no systematic variation in the mutation rate among organisms experiencing different habitats.
Conclusions
Given that 50% beneficial mutations may be an unrealistic assumption, and that recombination is ubiquitous in sexual species, the evolution of an elevated mutation rate in a sexual species experiencing directional climate change might be rather unlikely. Furthermore, when the percentage of beneficial mutations and the population size are small, sexual species (especially multicellular ones) producing few offspring may be expected to react to changing environments not by adaptive genetic change, but mainly through plasticity. Without the ability for a plastic response, such species may become – at least locally – extinct.