How Do Species Interactions Affect Evolutionary Dynamics Across Whole Communities?

Abstract

Theories of how species evolve in changing environments mostly consider single species in isolation or pairs of interacting species. Yet all organisms live in diverse communities containing many hundreds of species. This review discusses how species interactions influence the evolution of constituent species across whole communities. When species interactions are weak or inconsistent, evolutionary dynamics should be predictable by factors identified by single-species theory. Stronger species interactions, however, can alter evolutionary outcomes and either dampen or promote evolution of constituent species depending on the number of species and the distribution of interaction strengths across the interaction network. Genetic interactions, such as horizontal gene transfer, might also affect evolutionary outcomes. These evolutionary mechanisms in turn affect whole-community properties, such as the level of ecosystem functioning. Successful management of both ecosystems and focal species requires new understanding of evolutionary interactions across whole communities.

Ecological sorting and character displacement contribute to the structure of communities ofClarkiaspecies

“…However, previous studies of character displacement have focused on pairwise interactions and have not explored how displacement may change in a more complex community. Because indirect ecological effects can either strengthen or dilute a pattern of selection generated by a pairwise interaction (terHorst et al ., ), the strength of patterns consistent with character displacement in more complex communities will depend on the nature of the interactions between the additional species present in these communities (Barraclough, ; Mayfield & Stouffer, ). Studying character displacement in different types of sympatric communities will help to determine whether character displacement tends to generate repeatable or nonrepeatable patterns of phenotypic change (Germain et al ., ).…”

Ecological conditions determine extinction risk in co-evolving bacteria-phage populations

“…Microbial communities are subject to a broad range of biotic and abiotic selection pressures and are capable of rapid evolutionary change in response [1]. Antagonistic interactions, such as between bacteria and bacteriophages (phages), in particular drive continuous evolutionary change through recurrent cycles of adaptation and counter-adaptation, known as Red Queen coevolution [2–4].…”

Trade-off shapes diversity in eco-evolutionary dynamics

“…In a system of evolving competitors, strategy adoption is the result of eco-evolutionary feedbacks mediated by interaction of species [31,[50][51][52]. Evolutionary changes at the ge-netic level influence ecology if they cause phenotypic variations that affect biotic or abiotic interactions of species which in turn changes the species composition and occasionally forces species to evolve their strategies [52][53][54][55][56][57][58].…”