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Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli
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Frequency dependence and the predictability of evolution in a changing environment.

Luis-Miguel Chevin1, Zachariah Gompert2, Patrik Nosil1,2

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Frequency-dependent selection interacts with environmental changes to shape evolution. Moderate negative frequency-dependent selection can maintain fluctuations, while strong selection can lead to unpredictable cycles or chaos.

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Population genetics
  • Ecological dynamics

Background:

  • Frequency-dependent (FD) selection influences evolutionary trajectories by linking fitness to population composition.
  • Negative frequency-dependent selection (NFDS) can maintain polymorphisms or drive frequency fluctuations.
  • Previous studies often overlooked the impact of dynamic environments on FD selection.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the interplay between frequency-dependent selection and temporally fluctuating environments.
  • To determine how environmental dynamics affect population genetic change under FD selection.
  • To clarify the conditions under which FD-driven fluctuations persist.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of population genetic models incorporating FD selection and environmental fluctuations.
  • Utilized Lewontin's metric (slope of frequency change) to distinguish microevolutionary outcomes.
  • Reviewed empirical examples of FD selection in ecological contexts.

Main Results:

  • A slope metric (D) effectively distinguishes evolutionary outcomes, even in changing environments.
  • Moderate NFDS (0 > D > -2) can sustain quasi-cycles fueled by noise or drift, buffering environmental responses.
  • Strong NFDS (D < -2) can generate self-sustained cycles or chaos, limiting predictability.

Conclusions:

  • The interaction between internal evolutionary dynamics and external environmental forcing is crucial for understanding evolution.
  • Environmental fluctuations can modulate or be overwhelmed by FD selection, depending on its strength.
  • Further systematic investigation is needed to predict evolutionary outcomes in complex, dynamic systems.