Stelkens Rike B, Brockhurst Michael A, Hurst Gregory D D, Greig Duncan
Institute of Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool Liverpool, UK.
Department of Biology, University of York York, UK.
Evol Appl. 2014 Dec;7(10):1209-17. doi: 10.1111/eva.12214. Epub 2014 Sep 25.
The resilience of populations to rapid environmental degradation is a major concern for biodiversity conservation. When environments deteriorate to lethal levels, species must evolve to adapt to the new conditions to avoid extinction. Here, we test the hypothesis that evolutionary rescue may be enabled by hybridization, because hybridization increases genetic variability. Using experimental evolution, we show that interspecific hybrid populations of Saccharomyces yeast adapt to grow in more highly degraded environments than intraspecific and parental crosses, resulting in survival rates far exceeding those of their ancestors. We conclude that hybridization can increase evolutionary responsiveness and that taxa able to exchange genes with distant relatives may better survive rapid environmental change.
种群对快速环境退化的恢复力是生物多样性保护的一个主要关注点。当环境恶化到致命水平时，物种必须进化以适应新条件以避免灭绝。在此，我们检验了这样一个假设，即杂交可能会促成进化拯救，因为杂交会增加遗传变异性。通过实验进化，我们表明酿酒酵母的种间杂交种群比种内杂交和亲本杂交更能适应在退化程度更高的环境中生长，其存活率远远超过其祖先。我们得出结论，杂交可以提高进化响应能力，并且能够与远亲交换基因的分类群可能更能在快速的环境变化中存活下来。
