Do stressful conditions make adaptation difficult? Guppies in the oil‐polluted environments of southern Trinidad

Evolutionary Applications

Gregor Rolshausen¹  Dawn A. T. Phillip⁵  Denise M. Beckles³  Ali Akbari⁶  Subhasis Ghoshal⁶  Patrick B. Hamilton²  Charles R. Tyler²  Alan G. Scarlett⁷  Indar Ramnarine⁵  Paul Bentzen⁴ 

[1] Redpath Museum and Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada;School of Biosciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK;Department of Chemistry, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago;Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada;Department of Life Sciences, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago;Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada;Biochemistry Research Center, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, UK

关键词: adaptation;    ecotoxicology;    habitat degradation;    natural selection and contemporary evolution;   

DOI  :  10.1111/eva.12289

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

The ability of populations to rapidly adapt to new environments will determine their future in an increasingly human-modified world. Although meta-analyses do frequently uncover signatures of local adaptation, they also reveal many exceptions. We suggest that particular constraints on local adaptation might arise when organisms are exposed to novel stressors, such as anthropogenic pollution. To inform this possibility, we studied the extent to which guppies (Poecilia reticulata) show local adaptation to oil pollution in southern Trinidad. Neutral genetic markers revealed that paired populations in oil-polluted versus not-polluted habitats diverged independently in two different watersheds. Morphometrics revealed some divergence (particularly in head shape) between these environments, some of which was parallel between rivers. Reciprocal transplant experiments in nature, however, found little evidence of local adaptation based on survival and growth. Moreover, subsequent laboratory experiments showed that the two populations from oil-polluted sites showed only weak local adaptation even when compared to guppies from oil-free northern Trinidad. We conclude that guppies show little local adaptation to oil pollution, which might result from the challenges associated with adaptation to particularly stressful environments. It might also reflect genetic drift owing to small population sizes and/or high gene flow between environments.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 The Authors. Evolutionary Applications published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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