Hurricane-induced selection on the morphology of an island lizard

Hurricanes are catastrophically destructive. Beyond their toll on human life and livelihoods, hurricanes have massive and often long-lasting effects on ecological systems. Despite many examples of mass mortality events following hurricanes, hurricane-induced natural selection has never been demonstrated. Immediately after we finished a survey of Anolis scriptus, a common, small-bodied lizard found throughout the Turks and Caicos archipelago, our study populations were battered by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Shortly thereafter, we revisited the populations to determine whether morphological traits related to clinging capacity had shifted in the intervening six weeks and found that surviving lizards differed in body size, relative limb length and toepad size from those present before the storm. Our serendipitous study, the first to employ an immediate before-after comparison to test this question, demonstrates that hurricanes can induce phenotypic change in a population, and strongly impli...飓风具有极强的灾难性破坏力。除了对人类生命与生计造成惨重损失外，飓风还会对生态系统产生大规模且往往持久的影响。尽管已有诸多飓风过后大规模种群死亡事件的案例记录，但飓风引发的自然选择效应从未被证实过。在我们完成对安乐蜥（*Anolis scriptus*，一种分布于特克斯和凯科斯群岛的常见小型蜥蜴）的调查后不久，我们的研究种群便遭遇了飓风艾尔玛（Hurricane Irma）与飓风玛丽亚（Hurricane Maria）的重创。此后不久，我们重新对这些种群进行了回访，以探究间隔的六周内，与攀爬能力相关的形态性状是否发生了改变；结果发现，幸存蜥蜴的体型、相对肢长以及趾垫尺寸，均与风暴前的种群个体存在差异。这项偶然开展的研究首次采用风暴前后即刻对照的方式来验证这一科学问题，结果证实飓风可引发种群的表型变化，且强烈暗示……