Evolution in Pond Metacommunities

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

Understanding how ecological systems respond to environmental change is critical to both fundamental and applied ecology. Work to date has focused on two distinct processes, how individual populations respond via evolutionary change, and how the species composition of communities responds. The interaction between these two processes has not been investigated, but studies suggest that these processes will interfere with each other; that is, if resident species adapt rapidly then compositional change is less likely and vice-versa. Studies further suggest that adaptation by residents is more likely in isolated communities and compositional change is more likely in less isolated ones. The effects of environmental change on the interaction of adaptive evolution and community change will be investigated in experimental outdoor mesocosms by manipulating the genetic composition of individual species, the species composition of communities, and the amount of dispersal among communities. Human impacts on environments are changing patterns of isolation (via both habitat fragmentation and facilitated dispersal) and changing environmental conditions (via eutrophication, pollution, climate change, etc.). A better understanding of how these changes are likely to affect organisms, populations, communities, and ecosystems will improve predictions of ecosystem responses to current and future environmental change. This research will provide some of the first empirical studies of interactions among isolation, dispersal, evolutionary changes in species, and community composition.