Studies of local adaptation provide important insights into the power of natural selection relative to gene flow and other evolutionary forces. They are a paradigm for testing evolutionary hypotheses about traits favoured by particular environmental factors. This paper is an attempt to summarize the conceptual framework for local adaptation studies. We first review theoretical work relevant for local adaptation. Then we discuss reciprocal transplant and common garden experiments designed to detect local adaptation in the pattern of deme · habitat interaction for fitness. Finally, we review research questions and approaches to studying the processes of local adaptation ‐ divergent natural selection, dispersal and gene flow, and other processes affecting adaptive differentiation of local demes. We advocate multifaceted approaches to the study of local adaptation, and stress the need for experiments explicitly addressing hypotheses about the role of particular ecological and genetic factors that promote or hinder local adaptation. Experimental evolution of replicated populations in controlled spatially heterogeneous environments allow direct tests of such hypotheses, and thus would be a valuable way to complement research on natural populations.

/pdf/conceptual-issues-in-local-adaptation-48foi7473m.pdf

Conceptual issues in local adaptation

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(01)00068-9.pdf

An evolutionarily conserved function of the Drosophila insulin receptor and insulin-like peptides in growth control

The evolution of intrinsic growth rate has received less attention than other life history traits, and has been studied differently in plants, homoiotherms, and poikilotherms. The benefits of rapid growth are obvious, so the problems is to explain the costs and tradeoffs that cause organisms to grow below their physiological maximum. Four prevailing themes emerge from the literature: (1) slow growth is adaptive for dealing with nutrient stress, (2) the tradeoff between growth rate and development limits growth in species that require mature function early in life, (3) rapid growth evolves when a minimum size must be reached quickly, such as for sexual maturation or overwintering, and (4) rapid growth may evolve to compensate for slowed growth owing to environmental conditions. Evidence for each of these themes is detailed for plants, homoiotherms, and poikilotherms. In addition, empirical evidence is reviewed for costs of rapid growth, including increased fluctuating asymmetry, reduced immune capacity, and reduced ability to respond to environmental stress.

https://www.biology.ucr.edu/people/postdocs/reprints/01arendt_qrb%20.pdf

Adaptive intrinsic growth rates: an integration across taxa

We describe the impact of recent life-history plasticity theory on insect studies, particularly on the interface between genetics and plasticity. We focus on the three-dimensional relationship between three key life-history traits: adult size (or mass), development time and growth rate, and the connections to life cycle regulation, host plant choice, and sexual selection in seasonal environments. The review covers fitness consequences of variation in size, development time and growth rate, and effects of sex, photoperiod, temperature, diet, and perceived mortality risk on these traits. We give special attention to evidence for adaptive plasticity in growth rates because of the important effects of such plasticity on the expected relationships between development time and adult size and, hence, on the use of life-history, fitness, and optimality approaches in ecology, as well as in genetics.

Plasticity in Life-History Traits

SYNOPSIS. The majority of ectotherms grow slower but mature at a larger body size in colder environments. This phenomenon has puzzled biologists because classic theories of life-history evolution predict smaller sizes at maturity in environments that retard growth. During the last decade, intensive theoretical and empirical research has generated some plausible explanations based on nonadaptive or adaptive plasticity. Nonadaptive plasticity of body size is hypothesized to result from thermal constraints on cellular growth that cause smaller cells at higher temperatures, but the generality of this theory is poorly supported. Adaptive plasticity is hypothesized to result from greater benefits or lesser costs of delayed maturation in colder environments. These theories seem to apply well to some species but not others. Thus, no single theory has been able to explain the generality of temperature-size relationships in ectotherms. We recommend a multivariate theory that focuses on the coevolution of thermal reaction norms for growth rate and size at maturity. Such a theory should incorporate functional constraints on thermal reaction norms, as well as the natural covariation between temperature and other environmental variables.

/pdf/temperature-growth-rate-and-body-size-in-ectotherms-fitting-58gosi2wa7.pdf

Temperature, Growth Rate, and Body Size in Ectotherms: Fitting Pieces of a Life-History Puzzle

Replicated lines of Drosophila melanogaster were allowed to evolve in population cage culture at 16.5° C or 25° C for five years. Their larval and pupal development times, larval growth rates, larval critical weights for pupariation and pre-adult survival rates were then measured at both temperatures. Pre-adult survival showed evidence of adaptation of the lines to their thermal selection regimes, with each set of lines showing superior survival when tested at the temperature at which they had been evolving. Pupal periods were similar for all lines when growing at 16.5° C but, at 25° C, the low temperature lines had the longer pupal periods. Irrespective of experimental temperature, low temperature lines grew faster and had shorter larval development periods than the high temperature lines. Larval critical weights for pupariation were higher in the low temperature lines at the low experimental temperature, and higher in the high temperature lines at the higher experimental temperature. The correlations between these traits induced by thermal evolution were in general different from or opposite to the genetic correlations found within a single temperature.

Thermal evolution of pre-adult life history traits in Drosophila melanogaster

We examined the evolutionary and developmental responses of body size to temperature in Drosophila melanogaster, using replicated lines of flies that had been allowed to evolve for 5 yr at 25°C or at 16.5°C. Development and evolution at the lower temperature both resulted in higher thorax length and wing area. The evolutionary effect of temperature on wing area was entirely a consequence of an increase in cell area. The developmental response was mainly attributable to an increase in cell area, with a small effect on cell number in males. Given its similarity to the evolutionary response, the increase in body size and cell size resulting from development at low temperature may be a case of adaptive phenotypic plasticity. The pattern of plasticity did not evolve in response to temperature for any of the traits. The selective advantage of the evolutionary and developmental responses to temperature is obscure and remains a major challenge for future work.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1558-5646.1994.tb05311.x

Evolution and development of body size and cell size in drosophila melanogaster in response to temperature.

Three replicate lines of Drosophila melanogaster were cultured at each of two temperatures (16.5?C and 25?C) in population cages for 4 yr. The lifespans of both sexes and the fecundity and fertility of the females were then measured at both experimental temperatures. The characters showed evidence of adaptation; flies of both sexes from each selection regime showed higher longevity, and females showed higher fecundity and fertility, than flies from the other selection regime when they were tested at the experimental temperature at which they had evolved. Calculation of intrinsic rates of increase under different assumptions about the rate of population increase showed that the difference between the lines from the two selection regimes became less the higher the rate of population increase, because the lines were more similar in early adulthood than they were later. Despite the increased adaptation of the low-temperature lines to the low temperature, like the high temperature lines they produced progeny at a higher rate at the higher temperature. The lines may have independently evolved adaptations to their respective thermal regimes during the experiment, or there may have been a trade-off between adaptation to the two temperatures, or mutation pressure may have lowered adaptation to the temperature that the flies no longer encountered.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1558-5646.1995.tb02285.x

Rapid laboratory evolution of adult life-history traits in drosophila melanogaster in response to temperature.

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Brian Barrie

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Thermal evolution of pre-adult life history traits in Drosophila melanogaster

Evolution and development of body size and cell size in drosophila melanogaster in response to temperature.

Rapid laboratory evolution of adult life-history traits in drosophila melanogaster in response to temperature.