Experimental evolution of dispersal: Unifying theory, experiments and natural systems

Abstract

Dispersal is a central life history trait that affects the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations and communities. The recent use of experimental evolution for the study of dispersal is a promising avenue for demonstrating valuable proofs of concept, bringing insight into alternative dispersal strategies and trade‐offs, and testing the repeatability of evolutionary outcomes. Practical constraints restrict experimental evolution studies of dispersal to a set of typically small, short‐lived organisms reared in artificial laboratory conditions. Here, we argue that despite these restrictions, inferences from these studies can reinforce links between theoretical predictions and empirical observations and advance our understanding of the eco‐evolutionary consequences of dispersal. We illustrate how applying an integrative framework of theory, experimental evolution and natural systems can improve our understanding of dispersal evolution under more complex and realistic biological scenarios, such as the role of biotic interactions and complex dispersal syndromes.

Range expansion is both slower and more variable with rapid evolution across a spatial gradient in temperature

“…spreading higher in elevation or latitude). Although our study allows us to track a distribution of eco-evolutionary outcomes across highly replicated landscapes, we note that scaling up any experimental results from any micro-or mesocosm studies to natural populations requires careful consideration (Lustenhouwer et al, 2023). As populations traverse across environmentally variable and complex landscapes, studies of natural range expansions will need to incorporate how selection from underlying environmental variation in space can influence our ability to predict future range expansions.…”

“…Experimental range expansions in 'miniaturised' landscapes (Larsen & Hargreaves, 2020;Lustenhouwer et al, 2023) can provide a powerful bridge between theory and range expansion in natural landscapes. First, these landscapes differ from traditional microcosms in that replicate populations can disperse naturally across linear landscapes, such that realistic genetic and demographic spatial structure arises during range expansions.…”

Availability of mates and food influence the plasticity in strategies mediating life‐history tradeoffs in an insect

“…Dispersal among habitat patches is a key ecological process that spans several levels of biological organization -from the fitness of individual organisms up to population dynamics and even species' distributions (reviewed by Bowler and Benton 2005, Clobert et al 2009, Stevens et al 2014, Lustenhouwer et al 2023. Dispersal syndromes can appear when groups of animal taxa share covariation in morphological, behavioral, or life-history traits associated with dispersal (reviewed by Stevens et al 2014), but similar covariation can occur within populations.…”

Fight not flight: parasites drive the bacterial evolution of resistance, not escape

“…These results showing the evolution of resistance and not dispersal could be specific to any number of biological particularities of our model system. Unfortunately, establishing the generality of these findings in vitro is experimentally intractable (Lustenhouwer et al 2023). Instead, we leveraged existing mathematical models of bacterial growth and dispersal to simulate bacterial evolution in the presence of different parasite spatial distributions across a wide range of bacterial trait values.…”