Liow Lee Hsiang, Di Martino Emanuela, Krzeminska Malgorzata, Ramsfjell Mali, Rust Seabourne, Taylor Paul D, Voje Kjetil L
Natural History Museum and Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK.
Ecol Lett. 2017 Aug;20(8):981-988. doi: 10.1111/ele.12795. Epub 2017 Jun 14.
Competition is an important biotic interaction that influences survival and reproduction. While competition on ecological timescales has received great attention, little is known about competition on evolutionary timescales. Do competitive abilities change over hundreds of thousands to millions of years? Can we predict competitive outcomes using phenotypic traits? How much do traits that confer competitive advantage and competitive outcomes change? Here we show, using communities of encrusting marine bryozoans spanning more than 2 million years, that size is a significant determinant of overgrowth outcomes: colonies with larger zooids tend to overgrow colonies with smaller zooids. We also detected temporally coordinated changes in average zooid sizes, suggesting that different species responded to a common external driver. Although species-specific average zooid sizes change over evolutionary timescales, species-specific competitive abilities seem relatively stable, suggesting that traits other than zooid size also control overgrowth outcomes and/or that evolutionary constraints are involved.
竞争是一种重要的生物相互作用，会影响生存和繁殖。虽然生态时间尺度上的竞争受到了极大关注，但对于进化时间尺度上的竞争却知之甚少。竞争能力在数十万到数百万年的时间里会发生变化吗？我们能否利用表型特征预测竞争结果？赋予竞争优势的特征和竞争结果会有多大变化？在这里，我们利用跨越200多万年的包被海洋苔藓虫群落表明，大小是覆盖生长结果的一个重要决定因素：具有较大个虫的群体往往会覆盖生长具有较小个虫的群体。我们还检测到平均个虫大小在时间上的协同变化，这表明不同物种对共同的外部驱动因素做出了反应。尽管特定物种的平均个虫大小在进化时间尺度上会发生变化，但特定物种的竞争能力似乎相对稳定，这表明除了个虫大小之外的其他特征也控制着覆盖生长结果和/或涉及进化限制因素。
