Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011 Apr 25;6(4):e14799. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0014799.
Ecologists have increasingly come to understand that evolutionary change on short time-scales can alter ecological dynamics (and vice-versa), and this idea is being incorporated into community ecology research programs. Previous research has suggested that the size and topology of the gene network underlying a quantitative trait should constrain or facilitate adaptation and thereby alter population dynamics. Here, I consider a scenario in which two species with different genetic architectures compete and evolve in fluctuating environments. An important trade-off emerges between adaptive accuracy and adaptive speed, driven by the size of the gene network underlying the ecologically-critical trait and the rate of environmental change. Smaller, scale-free networks confer a competitive advantage in rapidly-changing environments, but larger networks permit increased adaptive accuracy when environmental change is sufficiently slow to allow a species time to adapt. As the differences in network characteristics increase, the time-to-resolution of competition decreases. These results augment and refine previous conclusions about the ecological implications of the genetic architecture of quantitative traits, emphasizing a role of adaptive accuracy. Along with previous work, in particular that considering the role of gene network connectivity, these results provide a set of expectations for what we may observe as the field of ecological genomics develops.
生态学家越来越认识到，短时间尺度上的进化变化可以改变生态动力学（反之亦然），这一观点正在被纳入群落生态学研究计划中。先前的研究表明，数量性状背后的基因网络的大小和拓扑结构应该限制或促进适应，从而改变种群动态。在这里，我考虑了一个在波动环境中竞争和进化的两个具有不同遗传结构的物种的情况。在生态关键性状的基因网络的大小和环境变化的速度的驱动下，出现了适应性准确性和适应性速度之间的重要权衡。在快速变化的环境中，较小的无标度网络赋予了竞争优势，但当环境变化足够缓慢，允许一个物种有时间适应时，较大的网络允许增加适应性准确性。随着网络特征差异的增加，竞争的解决时间减少。这些结果扩展和完善了先前关于数量性状遗传结构的生态意义的结论，强调了适应性准确性的作用。与之前的工作，特别是考虑基因网络连通性的作用的工作一起，这些结果为我们在生态基因组学领域发展过程中可能观察到的情况提供了一组预期。
