Data from: 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 implicates natural selection as the cause. In the decades ahead, as extreme climate events are predicted to become more intense and prevalent, our understanding of evolutionary dynamics needs to incorporate the impact of these potentially severe selective episodes.飓风具有极强的灾难性破坏能力。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。尽管已有诸多飓风后大规模死亡事件的案例报道，但飓风诱导的自然选择（natural selection）此前从未被证实。在完成对安乐蜥（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玛（Irma）与飓风玛丽亚（Maria）的重创。此后不久，我们重新对这些种群开展调查，以明确间隔的六周内，与附着能力相关的形态性状是否发生了改变；结果发现，存活个体在体型、相对四肢长度以及趾垫尺寸上，与风暴前的种群个体存在显著差异。这项机缘巧合下开展的研究首次采用风暴前后的即时对照来验证这一科学问题，证实飓风可诱导种群发生表型变化（phenotypic change），并强烈暗示自然选择是其背后的核心成因。在未来数十年间，极端气候事件预计将愈发强烈且频发，我们对进化动力学（evolutionary dynamics）的认知亟需纳入这类潜在极强的选择性事件的影响。