Abstract
With ongoing global change, life is continuously forced to move to novel areas, which leads to dynamically changing species ranges. As dispersal is central to range dynamics, factors promoting fast and distant dispersal are key to understanding and predicting species ranges. During range expansions, genetic variation is depleted at the expanding front. Such conditions should reduce evolutionary potential, while increasing kin competition. Organisms able to recognise relatives may be able to assess increased levels of relatedness at expanding range margins and to increase their dispersal in a plastic manner. Using individual-based simulations and experimental range expansions of a spider mite, we demonstrate that plastic responses to kin structure can be at least as important as evolution in driving range expansion speed. Because recognition of kin or kind is increasingly documented across the tree of life, we anticipate it to be a highly important but neglected driver of range expansions.
Footnotes
Authorship statement: KVP, EAF, RS and DB developed the experimental design; KVP, FM performed the experiments, KVP, FM, MD, MLV & DB developed the simulation and statistical models; TVL & NW performed the transcriptomic analyses; all authors contributed to the reporting.
Data accessibility statement: all data will be made available on DRYAD; model code is available on Github https://github.com/dbonte/RangeExpansionModel-Experimental-evolution-Van-Petegem---Moerman.git