Olazcuaga Laure, Lincke Beatrice, DeLacey Sarah, Durkee Lily F, Melbourne Brett A, Hufbauer Ruth A
Department of Agricultural Biology Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado USA.
Graduate Degree Program in Ecology Colorado State University Fort Collins Colorado USA.
Evol Appl. 2023 Aug 3;16(8):1483-1495. doi: 10.1111/eva.13581. eCollection 2023 Aug.
Rapid environmental change presents a significant challenge to the persistence of natural populations. Rapid adaptation that increases population growth, enabling populations that declined following severe environmental change to grow and avoid extinction, is called evolutionary rescue. Numerous studies have shown that evolutionary rescue can indeed prevent extinction. Here, we extend those results by considering the demographic history of populations. To evaluate how demographic history influences evolutionary rescue, we created 80 populations of red flour beetle, , with three classes of demographic history: diverse populations that did not experience a bottleneck, and populations that experienced either an intermediate or a strong bottleneck. We subjected these populations to a new and challenging environment for six discrete generations and tracked extinction and population size. Populations that did not experience a bottleneck in their demographic history avoided extinction entirely, while more than 20% of populations that experienced an intermediate or strong bottleneck went extinct. Similarly, among the extant populations at the end of the experiment, adaptation increased the growth rate in the novel environment the most for populations that had not experienced a bottleneck in their history. Taken together, these results highlight the importance of considering the demographic history of populations to make useful and effective conservation decisions and management strategies for populations experiencing environmental change that pushes them toward extinction.
快速的环境变化对自然种群的存续构成了重大挑战。能够增加种群增长速度，使在严重环境变化后数量下降的种群得以增长并避免灭绝的快速适应过程，被称为进化拯救。大量研究表明，进化拯救确实能够防止物种灭绝。在此，我们通过考虑种群的种群统计学历史来拓展这些研究结果。为了评估种群统计学历史如何影响进化拯救，我们创建了80个赤拟谷盗种群，具有三类种群统计学历史：未经历瓶颈的多样化种群，以及经历了中等程度或强烈瓶颈的种群。我们让这些种群在一个全新且具有挑战性的环境中历经六个离散世代，并追踪灭绝情况和种群规模。在种群统计学历史中未经历瓶颈的种群完全避免了灭绝，而经历了中等程度或强烈瓶颈的种群中有超过20%灭绝了。同样，在实验结束时的现存种群中，对于历史上未经历瓶颈的种群，适应在新环境中使增长率提升得最多。综上所述，这些结果凸显了考虑种群的种群统计学历史对于为正经历使其走向灭绝的环境变化的种群制定有用且有效的保护决策和管理策略的重要性。
