Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.
Department of Bioscience, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2020 Sep;1476(1):5-22. doi: 10.1111/nyas.13974. Epub 2018 Sep 27.
Environments are changing rapidly, and to cope with these changes, organisms have to adapt. Adaptation can take many shapes and occur at different speeds, depending on the type of response, the trait, the population, and the environmental conditions. The biodiversity crisis that we are currently facing illustrates that numerous species and populations are not capable of adapting with sufficient speed to ongoing environmental changes. Here, we discuss current knowledge on the ability of animals and plants to adapt to environmental stress on different timescales, mainly focusing on thermal stress and ectotherms. We discuss within-generation responses that can be fast and induced within minutes or hours, evolutionary adaptations that are often slow and take several generations, and mechanisms that lay somewhere in between and that include epigenetic transgenerational effects. To understand and predict the impacts of environmental change and stress on biodiversity, we suggest that future studies should (1) have an increased focus on understanding the type and speed of responses to fast environmental changes; (2) focus on the importance of environmental fluctuations and the predictability of environmental conditions on adaptive capabilities, preferably in field studies encompassing several fitness components; and (3) look at ecosystem responses to environmental stress and their resilience when disturbed.
环境变化迅速，生物为了适应这些变化，必须进行适应。适应可以采取多种形式，发生的速度也因响应类型、特征、种群和环境条件而异。我们目前面临的生物多样性危机表明，许多物种和种群无法足够快地适应正在发生的环境变化。在这里，我们讨论了动物和植物在不同时间尺度上适应环境压力的能力的现有知识，主要集中在热应激和变温动物上。我们讨论了可以在几分钟或几小时内快速诱导的代内响应、通常较慢且需要几代的进化适应，以及处于两者之间的机制，包括跨代的表观遗传效应。为了理解和预测环境变化和压力对生物多样性的影响，我们建议未来的研究应：(1) 更多地关注理解对快速环境变化的反应类型和速度；(2) 关注环境波动和环境条件可预测性对适应能力的重要性，最好在包括几个适应度成分的实地研究中；(3) 研究生态系统对环境压力的响应及其在受到干扰时的恢复力。
