Dataset Information

A resurrection study reveals rapid adaptive evolution within populations of an invasive plant.

ABSTRACT: The future spread and impact of an introduced species will depend on how it adapts to the abiotic and biotic conditions encountered in its new range, so the potential for rapid evolution subsequent to species introduction is a critical, evolutionary dimension of invasion biology. Using a resurrection approach, we provide a direct test for change over time within populations in a species' introduced range, in the Asian shade annual Polygonum cespitosum. We document, over an 11-year period, the evolution of increased reproductive output as well as greater physiological and root-allocational plasticity in response to the more open, sunny conditions found in the North American range in which the species has become invasive. These findings show that extremely rapid adaptive modifications to ecologically-important traits and plastic expression patterns can evolve subsequent to a species' introduction, within populations established in its introduced range. This study is one of the first to directly document evolutionary change in adaptive plasticity. Such rapid evolutionary changes can facilitate the spread of introduced species into novel habitats and hence contribute to their invasive success in a new range. The data also reveal how evolutionary trajectories can differ among populations in ways that can influence invasion dynamics.

SUBMITTER: Sultan SE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3689352 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

A resurrection study reveals rapid adaptive evolution within populations of an invasive plant.

Sultan Sonia E SE Horgan-Kobelski Tim T Nichols Lauren M LM Riggs Charlotte E CE Waples Ryan K RK

Evolutionary applications 20120909 2

The future spread and impact of an introduced species will depend on how it adapts to the abiotic and biotic conditions encountered in its new range, so the potential for rapid evolution subsequent to species introduction is a critical, evolutionary dimension of invasion biology. Using a resurrection approach, we provide a direct test for change over time within populations in a species' introduced range, in the Asian shade annual Polygonum cespitosum. We document, over an 11-year period, the ev ...[more]

PMID: 23798976

Similar Datasets

Project description:Gene copy-number variation, which provides the raw material for the evolution of novel genes, is surprisingly widespread in natural populations. Experimental evolution studies have demonstrated an extremely high spontaneous rate of origin of gene duplications. When organisms are suboptimally adapted to their environment, gene duplication may compensate for reduced fitness by amplifying promiscuous activity of a gene, or increasing dosage of a suboptimal gene. The overarching goal of this study is to inverstigate whether CNVs constitute a common mechanism of adaptive genetic change during compensatory evolution and to further characterize the role of natural selection in dictating their evolutionary spread at a population-genomic level. Outcrossing populations of C. elegans with low fitness were evolved for >200 generations and the frequencies of CNVs in these populations were analyzed by oligonucleotide array comparative genome hybridization, quantitative PCR, and single-worm PCR. Multiple duplications and deletions were detected in intermediate to high frequencies and several lines of evidence suggest that the changes in frequency were adaptive. 1) Many copy-number changes reached high frequency, were near fixation, or were fixed in a short time. 2) Many independent duplications and deletions in high frequency harbor overlapping regions which likely include genes that are under selection for either higher or lower rates of expression. 3) The size spectrum of deuplications and deletions in the adaptive recovery populations is significantly larger than that of spontaneous copy-number variants in mutation accumulation experiments. This is expected if larger CNVs are more likely to encompass genes that are being selected for altered gene dosage. Out results validate the great potential borne by gene copy-number changes for compensatory evolution and adaptation. Experimental genome evolution of copy-number variants in 25 experimental lines compared to 5 ancestral control lines.

Dataset Information

A resurrection study reveals rapid adaptive evolution within populations of an invasive plant.

Publications

A resurrection study reveals rapid adaptive evolution within populations of an invasive plant.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets