Phenotypic evolution in animals: integrating multiple roles of the environment

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Biology tries to explain the origins and consequences of life's variety. My work contributes to an important debate on the role of environment in the evolution of an organism's features and ultimately how biodiversity arises. The classical view has the local environment only externally sorting different types, with the more successful surviving better and having more offspring than less successful types. An alternative view has the local environment also contributing an internal effect that shapes how organisms develop and so influences what different types are available to selection. These different roles contribute to the debate between 'nature' (genes that evolve) versus 'nurture' (genes that contribute to development) and whose evolutionary potential remains unknown. Many animal traits have flexible responses to rearing environment but we are just beginning to understand how this flexibility arises, disappears and influences an organism's performance. My work explores how the 'nature of nurture' (genes that influence developmental responses to environment) influence an individual's performance and either contribute to or limit evolution. My work lies at the intersection of ecology, development and evolution and so will contribute to a wider synthetic understanding of environmental effects in ecology and evolution. I integrate the classical selective function of the external environment with its potential internal affects on development to explain the unusual varieties of fishes in Canada's postglacial lakes. My work tests the roles of environment in the evolution of diversity though: 1) Lab experiments investigating how developmental responses to rearing in salt versus freshwater affects adaptation in a marine fish that colonize freshwater habitats; 2) Lab experiments assessing how developmental flexibility contributes to the formation of new species in Centrarchid fishes; 3) Field tests of the role of competition in the evolution of different varieties of pumpkinseed sunfish. These studies will contribute a better understanding of how environment and development interact and contribute to the evolution of important biodiversity.