「Ecosystem level evolutionary feedbacks: a new hope for range shifts caused by climate」

Joseph K. Bailey（Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee）

Predicting the evolutionary consequences of range shifts along gradients of global change is amongst the most challenging and pressing problems confronting modern evolutionary ecologists. Using a variety of plant systems that have evolved along the gradients of global change, here I build a framework for integrating genes to ecosystems at the landscape level to understand species range shifts in response to climate change. I provide specific examples of the ecosystem consequences of broad drivers of genetic divergence at the landscape level, ecosystem consequences of rapid evolution at a colonization front, community disassembly and rapid evolution in the trailing edge of species ranges all of which provide examples of rapid local adaptation. Theory and empirical data indicate that indirect genetic effects have fundamental roles in the patterns we find and may be important for understanding the consequences of genotypic diversity, evolutionary feedbacks, the co-evolutionary process and co-adaptation, and are a primary mechanism for the broad ecological and evolutionary dynamics that are likely to be a consequence of climate change. When indirect genetic effects occur along environmental gradients, both positive and negative feedbacks can evolve, resulting in regions of strong local adaptation and competition as well as regions of complementarity and facilitation. Such evolutionary dynamics have direct consequences for how individuals interact and evolve in mixture and drive the services ecosystems provide. Integrating such feedbacks, and diversity effects along environmental gradients represents a major conceptual, theoretical, and empirical frontier that must be considered in order to understand the whole system consequences of climate change on biodiversity and the services ecosystems provide.


「Evolutionary feedbacks link above- and below ground communities」

Jennifer A. Schweitzer（Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee）

Above- and belowground linkages commonly occur across scales of space, time and species and have important implications for a host of ecological phenomena. A little-appreciated approach, however, is to consider their evolutionary consequences. Recent empirical and theoretical work indicates that above- and belowground linkages between plants and soils can lead to trait divergence across environmental gradients through feedbacks. These results suggest that these interactions may have long-term consequences and may be important for mediating the consequences of global change.