Evolvability meets biogeography: evolutionary potential decreases at high and low environmental favourability

Understanding and forecasting the effects of environmental change on wild populations requires knowledge on a critical question: do populations have the ability to evolve in response to that change? However, our knowledge on how evolution works in wild conditions under different environmental circumstances is extremely limited. We investigated how environmental variation influences the evolutionary potential of phenotypic traits. We used published data to collect or calculate 135 estimates of evolvability of morphological traits of European wild bird populations. We characterized the environmental favourability of each population throughout the species' breeding distribution. Our results suggest that the evolutionary potential of morphological traits decreases as environmental favourability becomes high or low. Strong environmental selection pressures and high intra-specific competition may reduce species' evolutionary potential in low- and high- favourability areas, respectively. This ...

要理解并预测环境变化对野生种群的影响，亟需解答一个核心问题：种群是否具备响应环境变化的演化能力？然而，目前学界对于不同环境条件下野生种群的演化运作机制，认知仍十分有限。我们探究了环境变异如何影响表型性状（phenotypic traits）的演化潜力。我们依托公开数据集，收集并计算了欧洲野生鸟类种群形态性状（morphological traits）的135项可演化性估计值。我们针对各物种繁殖分布范围内的所有种群，表征了其环境适宜度（environmental favourability）。研究结果表明，形态性状的演化潜力会随环境适宜度趋近极高或极低而下降。高强度的环境选择压力与激烈的种内竞争（intra-specific competition），分别会在低适宜度与高适宜度区域削弱物种的演化潜力。此研究……