Kaplan Robert H, Phillips Patrick C
Department of Biology, Reed College, Portland, Oregon 97202, USA.
Evolution. 2006 Jan;60(1):142-56.
Variation in fitness generated by differences in functional performance can often be traced to morphological variation among individuals within natural populations. However, morphological variation itself is strongly influenced by environmental factors (e.g., temperature) and maternal effects (e.g., variation in egg size). Understanding the full ecological context of individual variation and natural selection therefore requires an integrated view of how the interaction between the environment and development structures differences in morphology, performance, and fitness. Here we use naturally occurring environmental and maternal variation in the frog Bombina orientalis in South Korea to show that ovum size, average temperature, and variance in temperature during the early developmental period affect body sizes, shapes, locomotor performance, and ultimately the probability of an individual surviving interspecific predation in predictable but nonadditive ways. Specifically, environmental variability can significantly change the relationship between maternal investment in offspring and offspring fitness so that increased maternal investment can actually negatively affect offspring over a broad range of environments. Integrating environmental variation and developmental processes into traditional approaches of studying phenotypic variation and natural selection is likely to provide a more complete picture of the ecological context of evolutionary change.
由功能表现差异所产生的适应性变化，通常可以追溯到自然种群中个体间的形态差异。然而，形态差异本身会受到环境因素（如温度）和母体效应（如卵大小的差异）的强烈影响。因此，要全面理解个体差异和自然选择的生态背景，就需要综合考虑环境与发育之间的相互作用是如何塑造形态、表现和适应性方面的差异的。在这里，我们利用韩国东方铃蟾自然发生的环境和母体差异，来表明卵大小、平均温度以及早期发育阶段的温度变化，会以可预测但非累加的方式影响个体的体型、形状、运动表现，最终影响个体在种间捕食中存活的概率。具体而言，环境变异性会显著改变母体对后代的投入与后代适应性之间的关系，以至于在广泛的环境范围内，母体投入的增加实际上可能会对后代产生负面影响。将环境变异和发育过程纳入研究表型变异和自然选择的传统方法中，可能会为进化变化的生态背景提供更完整的图景。
