RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 A tradeoff between robustness to environmental fluctuations and speed of evolution
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 834234
DO 10.1101/834234
A1 Max Schmid
A1 Maria Paniw
A1 Maarten Postuma
A1 Arpat Ozgul
A1 Frédéric Guillaume
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/08/834234.abstract
AB Organisms must cope with both short- and long-term environmental changes to persist. In this study we investigated theoretically if life histories trade off between their robustness to short-term environmental perturbations and their ability to evolve directional trait changes. By the use of mathematical models and stochastic individual-based simulations we could confirm the tradeoff, at least for comparisons between standardized life histories. Offspring dormancy and high adult survival allowed to maintain large population sizes when confronted with interannual environmental fluctuations while depressing the speed of evolution with ongoing environmental change. Instead, precocious offspring maturation and short-living adults promoted evolvability while lowering robustness. This tradeoff had immediate consequences for extinction dynamics in variable environments. High evolvability allowed to cope best with long-lasting gradual environmental change, but came at the expense of more pronounced population declines from environmental variability and during the initial phase of environmental change.