adaptive potential

Mixing fishes and climate change – adaptation by hybridisation

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Adapting to a changing world

The global climate is changing at an unprecedented rate, approaching conditions last seen globally over 3 million years ago. Impacted by the compounding effects of climate change, habitat modification, invasive species and direct exploitation (e.g., fishing and hunting), species across the globe are threatened with extinction. Key to the effective management of global biodiversity is the understanding of how species may (or may not) rise to the challenge of climate change: can species adapt? Which species will adapt? How will they adapt? The answers to these questions are elusive and complicated.

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Conservation applications of functional variation

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From genotype to phenotype

One fundamental aspect of conservation and evolution research is the implicit connection between genetic variation, phenotypic characteristics, and their influence on Darwinian fitness. Genetic diversity underpins many aspects of the adaptive potential of a population, and many of the fundamental concepts of the field rely on the assumed connection between genetic and phenotypic characteristics. But this connection is neither straightforward, nor always predictable.

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A simplified guide to genomic vulnerability

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Predicting the future for biodiversity

Conservation biology is frequently referred to as a “crisis discipline“, a status which doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon. Like any response to a crisis, biologists of all walks of life operate under a prioritisation scheme – how can our finite resources be best utilised to save as much biodiversity as possible? This approach requires some knowledge of both current vulnerability and future threat – we need to focus our efforts on those populations and species which are most at-risk of extinction in the near (often immediate) future.

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Our hand in maladaptation

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Maladaptation

In the previous post on The G-CAT, we talked about the role of maladaptation in the evolution of populations and species, and how this might impact their future. To summarise, maladaptation is the process (or trait responsible for) which causes a reduction in the fitness. As we discussed, this can come about a number of ways – such as from a shift in the selective environment or from fitness trade-offs in traits over time – and predominantly impacts on species by reducing their capacity to adapt. Particularly, this is important for small populations or those lacking in genetic diversity, which are already at risk of entering an extinction vortex and lack the capability to respond well to extreme selective changes (such as contemporary climate change).

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The Bad and the Ugly of evolution: an introduction to maladaptation

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Adaptation and natural selection

Adaptation via natural selection is one of the most fundamental components of understanding evolution. It describes how species can continually evolve new, innovative traits and produce the wondrous diversity of the natural world. This process is inevitably underpinned by particular heritable traits often linked to particular genetic variants (alleles). Remember that the underlying genetic trait (the allele) is referred to as the genotype; the physical outcomes of that allele (i.e. how it changes the physiological, behaviour or ecology of the organism) is the phenotype; and the scale of the benefit of possessing that trait is referred to as its fitness. Under the normal process of natural selection, phenotypes which increase fitness are selected for, which results in a shift in genotypes underpinning it.

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