Empirical patterns of environmental variation favor adaptive transgenerational plasticity
Empirical patterns of environmental variation favor adaptive transgenerational plasticity
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DOI：
10.1002/ece3.6022
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发表时间：
2020-01-29
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
Herman, Jacob
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Colicchio, Jack M.;Herman, Jacob
亲本环境对后代性状的影响已经众所周知了几十年。最近，由于我们对其机制基础的理解取得了进展，对这种跨代形式的表型可塑性的兴趣激增。理论研究同时通过预测环境条件，应该有利于跨代可塑性的适应性进化。然而，这些条件是否真的存在于自然界中，在很大程度上仍有待探索。在这里，使用长期气候数据，我们在美国大陆以4 km（2）的空间分辨率为一年生命周期的生物体建模了跨代可塑性的最佳水平。年温度和降水量往往是自相关的，但这些自相关的强度和方向变化很大，即使在附近的网站。当存在时，这样的环境自相关使得后代环境基于亲代环境在统计上可预测，这是跨代可塑性的适应性进化的关键条件。我们的最优模型的结果与这一预测是一致的：高水平的跨代可塑性有利于在网站与强环境自相关，很少或没有跨代可塑性有利于网站与弱或不存在的自相关。这些结果是第一批表明环境变化的自然模式有利于适应性跨代可塑性的进化。此外，这些研究结果表明，跨代可塑性可能是可变的性质，这取决于特定地点的环境变化模式。
Effects of parental environment on offspring traits have been well known for decades. Interest in this transgenerational form of phenotypic plasticity has recently surged due to advances in our understanding of its mechanistic basis. Theoretical research has simultaneously advanced by predicting the environmental conditions that should favor the adaptive evolution of transgenerational plasticity. Yet whether such conditions actually exist in nature remains largely unexplored. Here, using long-term climate data, we modeled optimal levels of transgenerational plasticity for an organism with a one-year life cycle at a spatial resolution of 4 km(2) across the continental United States. Both annual temperature and precipitation levels were often autocorrelated, but the strength and direction of these autocorrelations varied considerably even among nearby sites. When present, such environmental autocorrelations render offspring environments statistically predictable based on the parental environment, a key condition for the adaptive evolution of transgenerational plasticity. Results of our optimality models were consistent with this prediction: High levels of transgenerational plasticity were favored at sites with strong environmental autocorrelations, and little-to-no transgenerational plasticity was favored at sites with weak or nonexistent autocorrelations. These results are among the first to show that natural patterns of environmental variation favor the evolution of adaptive transgenerational plasticity. Furthermore, these findings suggest that transgenerational plasticity is likely variable in nature, depending on site-specific patterns of environmental variation.