Matching habitat choice: it's not for everyone

Abstract

Matching habitat choice is a habitat preference mechanism based on self‐assessment of local performance, such that individuals settle in the habitats that are best suited to their phenotypes, promoting local adaptation. Despite the important evolutionary implications of matching habitat choice, examples from natural populations are rare. One possible reason for this apparent rarity is that phenotype‐matching habitat choice might be manifest only in those population segments for which the cost of a phenotype–environment mismatch is high, although this hypothesis remains to be tested. Here, we test for matching habitat choice in a breeding population of sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka where the strength of performance tradeoffs across environments, and therefore the costs of mischoosing, can be evaluated in meaningful discrete groups (e.g. male versus females, and ocean‐age 2 versus ocean‐age 3). Consistent with matching habitat choice, salmon of similar ocean‐age and size tended to cluster together in sites of similar water depth. However, matching habitat choice was only favored (longer life span) in 3‐ocean females – the segment of the population most vulnerable to bear predation. Our findings support the hypothesis that matching habitat choice is more likely to be evident in those segments of a population that suffer a major cost of mischoosing, leading to ‘partial matching habitat choice’.

The interaction of resource use and gene flow on the phenotypic divergence of benthic and pelagic morphs of Icelandic Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus)

“…The presence of phenotype-environment correlations such as those between body shape and resource use might reflect the existence of performance trade-offs between habitats (Arnegard et al, 2014;Camacho & Hendry, 2020;Harrod et al, 2010;MacColl, 2011;Stroud & Losos, 2016;Wellborn & Langerhans, 2014).…”

Shared ancestral polymorphisms and chromosomal rearrangements as potential drivers of local adaptation in a marine fish

“…A de novo mutation is most likely to establish when s is greater than m (Lenormand, 2002; Wright, 1931; Yeaman & Otto, 2011), or otherwise it will be swamped from the local genetic pool. By contrast, directed gene flow may favour local adaptation when organisms’ dispersal decisions (i.e., context‐dependent dispersal; Clobert, Le Galliard, Cote, Meylan, & Massot, 2009) are adjusted according to local fitness prospects, leading to habitat matching choice (Edelaar, Siepielski, & Clobert, 2008), a process that has been reported in various taxa (e.g., Camacho & Hendry, 2020; Jacob et al., 2017; Lowe & Addis, 2019). Furthermore, gene flow can contribute to increase and/or maintain standing genetic variation on which selection can act, thus increasing the potential for local adaptation (Monnahan, Colicchio, & Kelly, 2015; Prezeworski, Coop, & Wall, 2005; Tigano & Friesen, 2016).…”

Experimental evidence that matching habitat choice drives local adaptation in a wild population

“…20% blackness) colour that resembled the extremes of the natural cline of colour variation, regardless of their original colour, sex or type of substrate on which they were found. The reason for manipulating the overall colour of individuals to either pale or dark is that, under matching habitat choice, the spatial responses of extreme phenotypes are expected to be stronger than that of intermediate phenotypes [28]. Furthermore, performance-based habitat selection decisions should be influenced primarily by the current colour of manipulated animals, independent of the magnitude of the difference between the original and newly acquired colour.…”

“…Matching habitat choice, by creating patterns of phenotype-environment covariance and non-random gene flow between different habitats [18], is predicted to influence the degree and rate of local adaptation, population persistence, genetic structure, the maintenance of genetic variation, the evolution of niche width, and even reproductive isolation [8,13,14,19,20 and references therein, 21, and see electronic supplementary material, S1 for evidence on female-detection distances by males that suggests that matching habitat choice indirectly causes assortative mating between grasshoppers with similar colours]. Understanding the prevalence and relevance of this mechanism in nature is therefore important, but supporting evidence from natural settings is still rare and often indirect [22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

“…For instance, to distinguish matching habitat choice from other processes that may act simultaneously and also generate phenotype-habitat correlations, such as phenotypic plasticity and selective mortality, the phenotype of free-ranging individuals needs to be measured and then linked to their departure and settlement decisions [27,29]. Crucially, under matching habitat choice, departure and settlement decisions are based on performance variation across habitats and, therefore, a good biological understanding of the operation and strength of performance trade-offs between ecologically distinct environments is essential [8,24,25,28]. Next, to decouple the effect of self-assessment of phenotype-environment match from that of direct genetic preference or imprinting, an experimental manipulation of phenotypes should be performed [8,17], but this are generally difficult to implement in natural populations, and so most studies so far instead used controlled laboratory or microcosm settings [30,31].…”