PARENT SESSION
Symposium 20: Evolution on ecological time scales
Organized by: A Hendry, D Réale, and G Fussmann
Thursday, August 11, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 517 B, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
The evolution of predator-induced phenotypic plasticity in Trinidadian guppies: Adaptive strategies for colonizing novel environments.
Ghalambor, Cameron*,1, Walker, Jeff2, Reznick, David3, 1 Department of Biology, Fort Collins, CO, USA2 Biology Department, Portland, ME, USA3 Department of Biology, Riverside, CA, USA
ABSTRACT- Colonization of new ecological communities can result in strong directional selection and rapid genetically based adaptive evolution. However, organisms can also respond to novel environments by exhibiting adaptive phenotypic plasticity. Phenotypic plasticity has been invoked as playing a critical role in the initial stages of colonization or invasion of new environments by allowing populations to survive and reproduce above simple maintenance levels. Such plasticity may actually play an important role in subsequent evolutionary changes as some theoretical and empirical evidence suggests phenotypic plasticity can drive genetic evolution through a diversity of mechanisms. Here we use Trinidadian guppies as a model system to investigate the role plasticity might play in the initial stages of colonization. We used second generation lab born guppies derived from populations that experience either high or low levels of predation and reared them under laboratory conditions either in the presence or absence of a natural predator. We find significant differences in the patterns of predator-induced plasticity in life history and morphological traits between these populations. We discuss how these results would play out in nature.
Key words: phenotypic plasticity, predator-prey, novel environments, adaptation