Abstract
Dispersal evolution impacts the fluxes of individuals and hence, connectivity in metapopulations. Connectivity is therefore decoupled from the structural connectedness of the patches within the spatial network. Because of demographic feedbacks, local selection can additionally steer the evolution of other life history traits. We investigated how different levels of connectedness affect dispersal and life history evolution by varying the interpatch distance in replicated experimental metapopulations of the two-spotted spider. We implemented a shuffling treatment to separate local- and metapopulation-level selection.
With lower metapopulation connectedness, an increased starvation resistance and delayed dispersal evolved. Intrinsic growth rates evolved at the local level by transgenerational plasticity or epigenetic processes. Changes in patch connectedness thus induce the genetic and non-genetic evolution of dispersal costs and demographic traits at both the local and metapopulation level. These trait changes are anticipated to impact metapopulations eco-evolutionary dynamics, and hence, the persistence and performance of spatially structured populations.
Footnotes
Statement of authorship: DB and SM developed the experimental design; SM performed the experiments and the statistical analysis; both authors contributed to manuscript writing and DB contributed substantially to the revision. Special thanks go to R. DeWilde, the master student who helped during the whole experiment, R. Claus who helped with the maintenance, and P. Vanhauwere and the bachelor students who contributed during the data collection.
Data accessibility statement: we hereby confirm that, should the manuscript be accepted, all data will be archived in a public repository and made accessible to public, and the data DOI will be included at the end of the article.
General revision following reviewers comments for Ecology Letters