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Related Experiment Video

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Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations

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Published on: February 3, 2023

Evolution in changing environments: modifiers of mutation, recombination, and migration.

Oana Carja¹, Uri Liberman², Marcus W Feldman¹

¹Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020; and ocarja@sas.upenn.edu mfeldman@stanford.edu.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

|November 28, 2014

Summary

Fluctuating selection shapes genetic diversity by tuning evolutionary forces like recombination, mutation, and migration. These mechanisms help populations adapt to changing environments, maintaining long-term adaptability.

Keywords:

fluctuating selection migration rate modifier genes mutation rate recombination rate

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Area of Science:

Population genetics
Evolutionary biology
Theoretical ecology

Background:

Maintaining genetic and phenotypic diversity is crucial for populations facing environmental changes.
Constant selection drives populations to fitness optima, while fluctuating selection necessitates mechanisms for generating genotypic diversity.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how fluctuating selection shapes the rates of recombination, mutation, and migration.
To compare the evolutionary dynamics of these three forces under changing environmental conditions.

Main Methods:

Utilized theoretical models to analyze the impact of environmental fluctuations on evolutionary forces.
Compared and contrasted the evolution of recombination, mutation, and migration under various environmental change patterns.

Main Results:

Recombination, mutation, and migration show surprisingly similar responses to fluctuating selection.
The characteristics of environmental fluctuations (shape, size, variance, asymmetry) predictably influence evolutionary dynamics.

Conclusions:

Tuning the rates of recombination, mutation, and migration is a key strategy for enhancing long-term population adaptability.
Environmental fluctuation patterns have distinct yet predictable effects on the evolution of genetic diversity.