title: Can Evolution Supply What Ecology Demands?
abstract: A simplistic view of the adaptive process pictures a hillside along which a population can climb: when ecological 'demands' change, evolution 'supplies' the variation needed for the population to climb to a new peak. Evolutionary ecologists point out that this simplistic view can be incomplete because the fitness landscape changes dynamically as the population evolves. Geneticists meanwhile have identified complexities relating to the nature of genetic variation and its architecture, and the importance of epigenetic variation is under debate. In this review, we highlight how complexity in both ecological 'demands' and the evolutionary 'supply' influences organisms' ability to climb fitness landscapes that themselves change dynamically as evolution proceeds, and encourage new synthetic effort across research disciplines towards ecologically realistic studies of adaptation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zürich, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Hanna
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kokko
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, University of Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Anurag
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chaturvedi
authors.affiliation: Plant Pathology, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Croll
authors.affiliation: Plant Ecological Genetics, Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Martin C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Fischer
authors.affiliation: Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zürich, 8057 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Frédéric
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Guillaume
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Genetics, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Karrenberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kerr
authors.affiliation: Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors.forename: Gregor
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rolshausen
authors.affiliation: Center for Adaptation to a Changing Environment, ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich Switzerland. Electronic address: jessica.stapley@env.ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stapley
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004463:Ecology; D014644:Genetic Variation