Rapid evolution of life history traits in response to warming, predation and competition: a meta-analysis

Although studies quantifying evolutionary change in response to the selective pressures that organisms face in the wild have demonstrated that organisms can evolve rapidly, we lack a systematic assessment of the frequency, magnitude and direction of rapid evolutionary change across taxa. To address this gap, we conducted a meta-analysis of 58 studies that document the effects of warming, predation or competition on the evolution of body size, development rate or fecundity in natural or experimental animal populations. We tested whether there was a consistent effect of any selective agent on any trait, whether the direction of these effects align with theoretical predictions, and whether the three agents select in opposing directions on any trait. Overall, we found weak effects of all three selective agents on trait evolution: none of our nine trait by selective agent combinations had an overall effect that differed from zero, only 31% of studies had a significant within-study effect, an...

尽管量化生物在野外面临的选择压力下进化变化的研究已证明生物可快速进化，但我们仍缺乏对跨分类群（taxa）快速进化变化的频率、幅度及方向的系统性评估。为填补这一空白，我们对58项研究进行了元分析（meta-analysis），这些研究记录了升温、捕食或竞争对自然或实验动物种群中体型、发育速率或繁殖力进化的影响。我们检验了以下问题：是否存在任何选择因子（selective agent）对任一性状的一致效应，这些效应的方向是否与理论预测一致，以及这三种因子是否对任一性状存在相反方向的选择作用。总体而言，我们发现所有三种选择因子对性状进化的效应均较弱：在我们的9个性状-选择因子组合中，没有一个组合的总体效应显著偏离零，仅31%的研究存在显著的研究内效应，且...