Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Mol Ecol. 2023 Dec;32(24):6729-6742. doi: 10.1111/mec.17176. Epub 2023 Oct 24.
Biological invasions represent an extraordinary opportunity to study evolution. This is because accidental or deliberate species introductions have taken place for centuries across large geographical scales, frequently prompting rapid evolutionary transitions in invasive populations. Until recently, however, the utility of invasions as evolutionary experiments has been hampered by limited information on the makeup of populations that were part of earlier invasion stages. Now, developments in ancient and historical DNA technologies, as well as the quickening pace of digitization for millions of specimens that are housed in herbaria and museums globally, promise to help overcome this obstacle. In this review, we first introduce the types of temporal data that can be used to study invasions, highlighting the timescale captured by each approach and their respective limitations. We then discuss how ancient and historical specimens as well as data available from prior invasion studies can be used to answer questions on mechanisms of (mal)adaptation, rates of evolution, or community-level changes during invasions. By bridging the gap between contemporary and historical invasive populations, temporal data can help us connect pattern to process in invasion science. These data will become increasingly important if invasions are to achieve their full potential as experiments of evolution in nature.
生物入侵代表了研究进化的绝佳机会。这是因为，在过去的几个世纪里，物种的偶然或有意引入已经在很大的地理范围内发生，这常常促使入侵种群发生快速的进化转变。然而，直到最近，由于对早期入侵阶段的种群构成的信息有限，入侵作为进化实验的效用受到了阻碍。现在，古 DNA 和历史 DNA 技术的发展，以及对全球数以百万计的植物标本馆和博物馆中保存的标本进行数字化的步伐加快，有望帮助克服这一障碍。在这篇综述中，我们首先介绍了可用于研究入侵的时间数据类型，重点介绍了每种方法所捕获的时间尺度及其各自的局限性。然后，我们讨论了如何利用古代和历史标本以及以前的入侵研究中获得的数据来回答有关（不适）适应机制、进化速度或入侵过程中群落水平变化的问题。通过弥合当代和历史入侵种群之间的差距，时间数据可以帮助我们将模式与入侵科学中的过程联系起来。如果入侵要充分发挥其作为自然界进化实验的潜力，这些数据将变得越来越重要。
