Brachionus calyciflorus
; comparative study
; Conference Paper
; egg production
; environmental change
; growth rate
; hatching
; natural population
; nonhuman
; pleiotropy
; population density
; population growth estimation
; priority journal
; reproductive success
; Rotifera
; sexual behavior
; sexual development
; acclimatization
; adaptation
; animal
; environment
; evolution
; female
; genetics
; growth, development and aging
; male
; physiology
; reproduction
; reproductive fitness
; salinity
; sex
; temperature
; Acclimatization
; Adaptation, Physiological
; Animals
; Biological Evolution
; Environment
; Female
; Genetic Fitness
; Male
; Reproduction
; Rotifera
; Salinity
; Sex
; Temperature
英文摘要:
A leading hypothesis for the evolutionary maintenance of sexual reproduction proposes that sex is advantageous because it facilitates adaptation. Changes in the environment stimulate adaptation but not all changes are equivalent; a change may occur along one or multiple environmental dimensions. In two evolution experiments with the facultatively sexual rotifer Brachionus calyciflorus, we test how environmental complexity affects the evolution of sex by adapting replicate populations to various environments that differ from the original along one, two, or three environmental dimensions. Three different estimates of fitness (growth, lifetime reproduction, and population density) confirmed that populations adapted to their new environment. Growth measures revealed an intriguing cost of complex adaptations: populations that adapted to more complex environments lost greater amounts of fitness in the original environment. Furthermore, both experiments showed that B. calyciflorus became more sexual when adapting to a greater number of environmental dimensions. Common garden experiments confirmed that observed changes in sex were heritable. As environments in nature are inherently complex these findings help explain why sex is maintained in natural populations.
Luijckx, P., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3B2, Canada; Ho Ho, E.K., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3B2, Canada; Gasim, M., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3B2, Canada; Chen, S., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3B2, Canada; Stanic, A., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3B2, Canada; Yanchus, C., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3B2, Canada; Kim, Y.S., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3B2, Canada; Agrawal, A.F., Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3B2, Canada
Recommended Citation:
Luijckx P.,Ho Ho E.K.,Gasim M.,et al. Higher rates of sex evolve during adaptation to more complex environments[J]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,2017-01-01,114(3)