The Potential for Experimental Evolution to Uncover Trade-Offs Associated With Anthropogenic and Climate Change Adaptation

Abstract

Evolutionary responses to climate change may incur trade-offs due to energetic constraints and mechanistic limitations, which are both influenced by environmental context. Adaptation to one stressor may result in life history trade-offs, canalization of phenotypic plasticity, and the inability to tolerate other stressors, among other potential costs. While trade-offs incurred during adaptation are difficult to detect in natural populations, experimental evolution can provide important insights by measuring correlated responses to selection as populations adapt to changing environments. However, studies testing for trade-offs have generally lagged behind the growth in the use of experimental evolution in climate change studies. We argue that the important insights generated by the few studies that have tested for trade-offs make a strong case for including these types of measurements in future studies of climate adaptation. For example, there is emerging consensus from experimental evolution studies that tolerance and tolerance plasticity trade-offs are an often-observed outcome of adaptation to anthropogenic change. In recent years, these types of studies have been strengthened by the use of sequencing of experimental populations, which provides promising new avenues for understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying observed phenotypic trade-offs.

Keywords: anthropogenic stressors; climate change; environmental tolerance; experimental design; genomic architecture; phenotypic plasticity.