PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Aidan P. Fielding
AU  - Jelena H. Pantel
TI  - Eco-evolutionary feedbacks and the maintenance of metacommunity diversity in a changing environment
AID  - 10.1101/2020.06.11.145680
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.06.11.145680
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/12/2020.06.11.145680.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/12/2020.06.11.145680.full
AB  - The presence and strength of resource competition can influence how organisms adaptively respond to environmental change. Selection can thus reflect a balance between adaptation to an environmental optimum and to avoid strong competition. While this has been explored at the local scale, less is known about evolutionary trajectories for competing species in a spatially structured landscape. We developed simulations of quantitative trait evolution using an adaptive dynamics framework for a trait that influences an organism’s carrying capacity and its intra- and interspecific competition strength. Species inhabited a three-patch landscape with a gradient of trait optima, and we varied the connectivity level of the species among patches. We also varied the presence and pace of directional environmental change and the strength of competition. Eco-evolutionary dynamics were strongly influenced by the combination of competition strength, dispersal level, and speed of environmental change. Dispersal introduced novel species combinations that altered fitness landscapes, while continuous environmental change introduced strong selection against the maintenance of coexisting competitors. As a consequence, diverse communities that also tracked environmental change were only maintained when strength of competition was strong, at intermediate levels of dispersal and environmental change. When competition was weaker, diverse communities were maintained by a spatial eco-evolutionary feedback loop, where populations from patches with distinct trait values colonized new patches, altered the strength of competition in that new patch, which in turn altered the strength of selection for resident species. These evolved residents then colonize other patches and alter their local distribution of competition strength, completing the feedback loop. Our results thus indicate that understanding biodiversity loss in a changing world will require improved knowledge of both the constraint that competitive interactions place on adaptive potential as well as the opportunity that landscape connectivity can present for introducing novel eco-evolutionary dynamics.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.