RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 On the advantages of low evolvability in fluctuating environments: could sex be the preadaptation for the stability-based sorting?
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 139030
DO 10.1101/139030
A1 J. Flegr
A1 P. Ponížil
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/20/139030.abstract
AB The ability of organisms to adaptively respond to environmental changes (evolvability) is usually considered to be an important advantage in interspecies competition. It has been suggested, however, that evolvability could be a double-edged sword that could turn into a serious handicap in fluctuating environments. The authors of this counterintuitive idea have published only verbal models to support their claims.Here we present the results of individual-based stochastic modelling of competition between two asexual species differing only by their evolvability. They show that, in changeable environments, less evolvable species could outperform its more evolvable competitor in a broad area of a parameter space, regardless of whether the conditions fluctuated periodically or aperiodically. Highly evolvable species prospered better nearly all the time; however, they sustained a higher probability of extinction during rare events of rapid transient change of conditions.Our results offer an explanation of why sexually reproducing species, with their reduced capacity to respond adaptively to environmental changes, prevail in most eukaryotic taxa in nearly all biotopes on the surface of Earth. These species often suffer several important disadvantages in direct competition with asexual species; however, they mostly win in changeable environments in the more important sorting-according-to-stability battle.