Evolutionary rescue can prevent rate-induced tipping

Autor: Lukas Halekotte, Ulrike Feudel, Anna Vanselow
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Theoretical Ecology. 15:29-50
ISSN: 1874-1746
1874-1738
Popis: Today, the transformation of ecosystems proceeds at unprecedented rates. Recent studies suggest that high rates of environmental change can cause rate-induced tipping. In ecological models, the associated rate-induced critical transition manifests during transient dynamics in which populations drop to dangerously low densities. In this work, we study how indirect evolutionary rescue - due to the rapid evolution of a predator’s trait - can save a prey population from the rate-induced collapse. Therefore, we explicitly include the time-dependent dynamics of environmental change and evolutionary adaptation in an eco-evolutionary system. We then examine how fast the evolutionary adaptation needs to be to counteract the response to environmental degradation and express this relationship by means of a critical rate. Based on this critical rate, we conclude that indirect evolutionary rescue is more probable if the predator population possesses a high genetic variation and, simultaneously, the environmental change is slow. Hence, our results strongly emphasize that the maintenance of biodiversity requires a deceleration of the anthropogenic degradation of natural habitats.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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