Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, KU Leuven, Ch. Deberiotstraat 32, B-3000, Leuven, Belgium.
Centre d'Ecologie fonctionelle et Evolutive, UMR 5175 CNRS Université de Montpellier EPHE, Campus CNRS, 1919 route de Mende, 34293, Montpellier Cedex 5, France.
Ecol Lett. 2016 Aug;19(8):839-53. doi: 10.1111/ele.12632. Epub 2016 Jun 24.
Interest in eco-evolutionary dynamics is rapidly increasing thanks to ground-breaking research indicating that evolution can occur rapidly and can alter the outcome of ecological processes. A key challenge in this sub-discipline is establishing how important the contribution of evolutionary and ecological processes and their interactions are to observed shifts in population and community characteristics. Although a variety of metrics to separate and quantify the effects of evolutionary and ecological contributions to observed trait changes have been used, they often allocate fractions of observed changes to ecology and evolution in different ways. We used a mathematical and numerical comparison of two commonly used frameworks - the Price equation and reaction norms - to reveal that the Price equation cannot partition genetic from non-genetic trait change within lineages, whereas the reaction norm approach cannot partition among- from within-lineage trait change. We developed a new metric that combines the strengths of both Price-based and reaction norm metrics, extended all metrics to analyse community change and also incorporated extinction and colonisation of species in these metrics. Depending on whether our new metric is applied to populations or communities, it can correctly separate intraspecific, interspecific, evolutionary, non-evolutionary and interacting eco-evolutionary contributions to trait change.
由于突破性的研究表明进化可以快速发生，并可以改变生态过程的结果，因此人们对生态进化动态的兴趣正在迅速增加。这个子学科的一个关键挑战是确定进化和生态过程及其相互作用对观察到的种群和群落特征变化的贡献有多么重要。尽管已经使用了各种指标来分离和量化进化和生态对观察到的性状变化的贡献，但它们通常以不同的方式将观察到的变化的分数分配给生态学和进化。我们使用数学和数值比较两种常用框架 - 价格方程和反应规范 - 来揭示价格方程不能在线系内将遗传与非遗传性状变化分开，而反应规范方法不能在线系内将种间与种内性状变化分开。我们开发了一种新的指标，该指标结合了基于价格的和反应规范指标的优势，将所有指标扩展到分析群落变化，并在这些指标中纳入了物种的灭绝和殖民化。根据我们的新指标是应用于种群还是群落，它可以正确分离种内、种间、进化、非进化和相互作用的生态进化对性状变化的贡献。
