Ecological fitting
Ecological fitting is "the process whereby organisms colonize and persist in novel environments, use novel resources or form novel associations with other species as a result of the suites of traits that they carry at the time they encounter the novel condition".
The simplest form of ecological fitting is resource tracking, in which an organism continues to exploit the same resources, but in a new host or environment. In this framework, the organism occupies a multidimensional operative environment defined by the conditions in which it can persist, similar to the idea of the
Origin
The evolutionary ecologist Daniel H. Janzen began to explicate the idea of ecological fitting with a 1980 paper[6] that observed that many instances of ecological interactions were inferred to be the result of coevolution when this was not necessarily the case, and encouraged ecologists to use the term coevolution more strictly. He observed that the existing defense traits of plants were likely produced by co-evolution with herbivores or parasites that no longer co-occurred with the plants, but that these traits were continuing to protect the plants against new attacks.
He expanded this idea in a 1985 paper
This cyclic life history pattern is dependent on three premises: that the ancestral range of most species is smaller than the ones now occupied, that biological communities have porous borders and are thus subject to invasion, and that species possess robust genotypes that allow them to colonize new habitats without evolution.[7] Thus, many biological communities may be made up of organisms that despite their complex biological interactions have very little evolutionary history with each other.
Contrasting views
Ecological fitting represents a contrasting view to, and
Mechanisms
Ecological fitting can occur by a variety of mechanisms, and can help to explain some ecological phenomena. Resource tracking can help to explain the parasite paradox: that parasites are specialists with narrow environmental ranges, which would encourage host fidelity, yet scientists commonly observe parasite shifts onto novel hosts, both in the
When operating under the more strict definition of ecological fitting, in which traits must be
Examples
Studies of introduced species can provide some of the best evidence for ecological fitting,
The human-made cloud forest on Green Mountain, Ascension Island, represents an example of how unrelated and unassociated plant species can form a functioning ecosystem without a shared evolutionary history.[28] 19th-century accounts of the island, including that of Charles Darwin on his expedition aboard the Beagle, described the rocky island as destitute and bare.[28] Plants were brought to the island by colonists, but the most important change occurred in 1843 with the terraforming of Green Mountain by botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, who recommended planting trees on Green Mountain and vegetation on the slopes to encourage deeper soils.[28] Plants were regularly sent from England until, in the 1920s, the mountain was green and verdant, and could be described as a functioning cloud forest.[28] Although some of the species likely were introduced together because of their coevolutionary relationships,[29] the overwhelming mechanism governing relationships is clearly ecological fitting.[30] The system has changed dramatically and even provides ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, all as a result of ecological fitting.[28][30] This is important with regard to climate change for two reasons: species ranges may be shifting dramatically, and ecological fitting is an important mechanism for the construction of communities over ecological time,[12][22] and it shows that human-made systems could be integral in the mitigation of climate change.[28]
Theoretical applications
Explaining diversity patterns
Ecological fitting can influence species diversity either by promoting diversification through genetic drift, or by maintaining evolutionary
Ecological fitting can also maintain populations in stasis, influencing diversity by limiting it. If populations are well-connected through gene flow, local adaptation may not be able to occur (known as antagonistic gene flow), or the well-connected population could evolve as a whole without speciation occurring. The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution theory can help to explain this: it suggests that coevolution or speciation of a species occurs across a wide geographic scale, rather than at the level of populations, so that populations experiencing selection for a particular trait affect gene frequencies across the geographic region due to gene flow. Populations of a species interact with different species in different parts of its range, so populations may be experiencing a small sub-set of the interactions to which the species as a whole is adapted.[12][32][33] This is based on three premises: there is an environmental and biotic interaction mosaic affecting fitness in different areas, there are certain areas where species are more coevolved than others, and that there is mixing of allele frequencies and traits between the regions to produce more homogeneous populations.[32][33] Thus, depending on connectivity of populations and strength of selection pressure in different arenas, a widespread population can coevolve with another species, or individual populations can specialize, potentially resulting in diversification.[17]
Community assembly
Ecological fitting can explain aspects of species associations and community assembly, as well as invasion ecology.
Emerging infectious diseases
A field of recent[
Related terms
References
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- doi:10.1101/sqb.1957.022.01.039. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2007-09-26. Retrieved 2011-01-30.
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- ^ a b c Janz, N.; Nylin, S. & Tilmon, K. J. (ed.) (2008). "Chapter 15: The oscillation hypothesis of host plant-range and speciation". Specialization, Speciation, and Radiation: the Evolutionary Biology of Herbivorous Insects. University of California Press, Berkeley, California. pp. 203–215.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Erwin, T.L.; Nelson, G. (ed.) & Rosen, D.E. (ed.) (1981). "Taxon pulses, vicariance, and dispersal: an evolutionary synthesis illustrated by carabid beetles". Vicariance biogeography: a critique. Columbia University Press, New York. pp. 159–196.
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- ^ a b c Brooks, Daniel R. (2002). "Taking Evolutionary Transitions Seriously". Semiotics, Evolution, Energy, and Development. 2 (1): 6–24.
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- ^ a b Brooks, Daniel R., Deborah A. McLennan, Virginia León-Règagnon, and Eric Hoberg (2006). "Phylogeny, ecological fitting and lung flukes: helping solve the problem of emerging infectious diseases". Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad. 77: 225–233.
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External links
- [1], Fasting-growing man-made rainforest may change leading ecological theory, Mongabay
- [2] Ascension Island: Another Green World, The Economist