Adaptation to environmental stress at different timescales

Abstract

Environments are changing rapidly, and to cope with these changes, organisms have to adapt. Adaptation can take many shapes and occur at different speeds, depending on the type of response, the trait, the population, and the environmental conditions. The biodiversity crisis that we are currently facing illustrates that numerous species and populations are not capable of adapting with sufficient speed to ongoing environmental changes. Here, we discuss current knowledge on the ability of animals and plants to adapt to environmental stress on different timescales, mainly focusing on thermal stress and ectotherms. We discuss within-generation responses that can be fast and induced within minutes or hours, evolutionary adaptations that are often slow and take several generations, and mechanisms that lay somewhere in between and that include epigenetic transgenerational effects. To understand and predict the impacts of environmental change and stress on biodiversity, we suggest that future studies should (1) have an increased focus on understanding the type and speed of responses to fast environmental changes; (2) focus on the importance of environmental fluctuations and the predictability of environmental conditions on adaptive capabilities, preferably in field studies encompassing several fitness components; and (3) look at ecosystem responses to environmental stress and their resilience when disturbed.

Evidence of trans-generational developmental modifications induced by simulated heat waves in an arthropod

“…Behavioural responses by large-range avoidance and the selection of thermally suitable locations resulting in poleward and upward range shifts are well documented in some taxa 3 , but should be reserved for arthropods with well-developed dispersal abilities such as some butterflies, dragonflies and grasshoppers 4 . The opportunities of the majority of arthropods, however, are limited to genetic modifications and/or phenotypic plasticity 5,6 , whereas the former mechanism might be appropriate to adopt to long-term environmental changes such as the annual increase of the mean temperatures 7 .…”

The effect of a temperature-sensitive prophage on the evolution of virulence in an opportunistic bacterial pathogen

“…For example we did not find indication of involvement of HSP/DNAK genes in mutations or epigenetic modifications, that are known to be the target of selection in hot and fluctuating environments (Sørensen et al, 2003; Ketola et al, 2004; Sørensen et al, 2016). In principle, stressful environments could select genes affecting acquisition of resources, resource sparing and plasticity (Kristensen et al, 2018) in which changes in (1) transcription regulation, (2) cell metabolism and (3) nutrient capture and transport into the cell could play a role, as seen in the clones sequenced in this study (Figure 5 and Supplementary Table S3).…”

“…Understanding the consequences of environmental changes and fluctuations on biota is of high priority at a time when environmental conditions are altered due to climate change (Chevin et al, 2010; Kristensen et al, 2018). Biological interactions between species have been suggested to be particularly sensitive to environmental changes (Walther, 2010).…”

On biological evolution and environmental solutions

“…e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / s c i t o t e n v loss of genetic and species diversity due to climate change and environmental pollution (Bell and Gonzalez, 2009;Kristensen et al, 2018). Evolutionary theory is also critical to understanding the emergence of antibiotic resistance in microbes (Palmer and Kishony, 2013) and chemical resistance in pests (Fisher et al, 2018).…”