Slow and population specific evolutionary response to a warming environment

Adaptation to increasingly warmer environments may be critical to avoid extinction. Whether and how these adaptive responses can arise is under debate. Though several studies have tackled evolutionary responses under different thermal selective regimes, very few have specifically addressed the under...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Santos, Marta A.|||0000-0003-1463-6037, Antunes, Marta A.|||0000-0002-5014-7145, Grandela, Afonso, Quina, Ana Sofia|||0000-0002-7216-9636, Santos, Mauro|||0000-0002-6478-6570, Matos, Margarida|||0000-0001-6998-5133, Simões, Pedro|||0000-0002-4253-1200
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:283125
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/283125
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1038/s41598-023-36273-3
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Evolution
Experimental evolution
Ecology
Evolutionary ecology
Descripción
Sumario:Adaptation to increasingly warmer environments may be critical to avoid extinction. Whether and how these adaptive responses can arise is under debate. Though several studies have tackled evolutionary responses under different thermal selective regimes, very few have specifically addressed the underlying patterns of thermal adaptation under scenarios of progressive warming conditions. Also, considering how much past history affects such evolutionary response is critical. Here, we report a long-term experimental evolution study addressing the adaptive response of Drosophila subobscura populations with distinct biogeographical history to two thermal regimes. Our results showed clear differences between the historically differentiated populations, with adaptation to the warming conditions only evident in the low latitude populations. Furthermore, this adaptation was only detected after more than 30 generations of thermal evolution. Our findings show some evolutionary potential of Drosophila populations to respond to a warming environment, but the response was slow and population specific, emphasizing limitations to the ability of ectotherms to adapt to rapid thermal shifts.