Evolutionary rescue can maintain an oscillating community undergoing environmental change

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Evolutionary Biology
• Theoretical Ecology

Background:

• Ecological communities face unprecedented environmental change, challenging their persistence.
• Species may require rapid in situ adaptation for survival when acclimation or migration are insufficient.
• Evolutionary rescue (ER) describes population recovery via genetic adaptation to environmental change.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate community evolutionary rescue (CER) dynamics in a three-species system with nonlinear resource oscillations.
• To examine how gradual environmental change impacts species interactions and community persistence.
• To identify signatures of CER within community dynamics.

Main Methods:

• Studied a three-species community model with nonlinear interactions and resource oscillations.
• Simulated gradual environmental change affecting interaction traits (strength and symmetry).
• Allowed component species to undergo rapid trait evolution.

Main Results:

• Trait evolution facilitated CER, preventing competitive exclusion and ensuring community persistence during environmental change.
• CER altered the characteristics of community oscillations (period and amplitude) post-environmental change.
• CER can be driven by simultaneous or subsequent evolutionary changes relative to environmental shifts.

Conclusions:

• Changes in community oscillation patterns may serve as indicators of ongoing evolutionary rescue.
• CER can stabilize complex, nonlinear ecological communities experiencing environmental fluctuations.
• Further experimental validation is needed to confirm theoretical predictions of evolutionary rescue in natural systems.