Eco-evolutionary interactions

 

While the influence of ecology on evolution has received a great deal of interest since Darwin first proposed evolution by natural selection, the influence of evolution on ecological processes has received relatively little. However, it is now clear that evolution occurs over ecological time scales and that rapid diversification can impact ecosystem dynamics through the evolution of functional traits. The recently emerging field of eco-evolutionary dynamics specifically takes into consideration the bidirectional interaction between ecology and evolution.

 

During my postdoc at Yale I tried to shed light on how evolutionary divergence in fish and zooplankton shapes ecological communities. We use a study system in Connecticut, USA, with lakes that contain populations of a dominant fish predator, the alewife, that either does (anadromous) or does not (landlocked) migrate between the marine and freshwater environments for the purposes of spawning.

 

Using a combination of comparative whole-lake studies and reciprocal transplant experiments, our research has shown that intraspecific variation in alewives has driven evolutionary divergence in the competing species bluegill. Observed shifts in bluegill foraging traits in lakes with landlocked alewife parallel those in alewife, sugesting interspecific competition leading to parallel phenotypic changes rather than to divergence whch is commonly predicted. Other research include adaptations in zooplankton prey (Daphnia) to differnet mortality regimes in response to  alewife life history type.

 

Also, my current research focus on biological responses to climate change deals with eco-evolutionary feedbacks.