LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

Experimental evolution of bet hedging in rotifer diapause traits as a response to environmental unpredictability

Photo by karsten_wuerth from unsplash

The adaptive response of organisms to unpredictable environments is increasingly recognized as a central topic in fundamental and applied evolutionary ecology. Selection due to environmental unpredictability can act on multiple… Click to show full abstract

The adaptive response of organisms to unpredictable environments is increasingly recognized as a central topic in fundamental and applied evolutionary ecology. Selection due to environmental unpredictability can act on multiple traits of an organism's life cycle to reduce the impact of high environmental variance. The aim of this research was to study how unpredictability selects for diapause traits: 1) the timing of sex (a proxy of the timing of diapausing egg production), and 2) the diapausing egg hatching fraction (a proxy of diapause duration). We used an experimental evolution approach with the facultative sexual rotifer Brachionus plicatilis. Laboratory populations experiencing two contrasting regimes of environmental fluctuation (predictable versus unpredictable) evolved divergently over a short time span (< 77 days). The populations under the unpredictable regime showed an earlier initiation of sexual reproduction and a lower hatching fraction of diapausing eggs than populations under the predictable regime. These findings demonstrate empirically the existence of bet-hedging strategies in B. plicatilis regarding both traits, consistent with theoretical predictions of bet-hedging evolution under conditions of unpredictable environmental variance. Given that scenarios of increased environmental variability are expected to occur in the near future, a comprehensive understanding of the role of bet-hedging strategies is necessary for predicting population responses to environmental change.

Keywords: bet hedging; diapause traits; environmental unpredictability; unpredictability; experimental evolution

Journal Title: Oikos
Year Published: 2017

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.