1. Home
  2. Shades of science (2020)
  3. Serra

Surviving uncertainty: Biodiversity, adaptation, and environmental fluctuation in rotifers

Manuel Serra, María José Carmona, Eduardo Moisés García-Roger, Raquel Ortells

Abstract


Studying evolution in the face of environmental uncertainty is crucial to understand biological diversity, because diversifying life strategies is key to survival and reproduction in uncertain environments. Rotifers are planktonic microinvertebrates that live in inland water bodies. Their complex life cycle combines sexual and asexual reproduction and, together with their small size and short generation times, makes them excellent model organisms in evolutionary ecology studies. Here we present field population and laboratory experimental evolution studies which show that these organisms can adapt by locally diversifying their life cycle to face unpredictable fluctuations in their environment.

Keywords


plankton; rotifers; complex life cycles; temporal environments; environmental unpredictability

Full Text: PDF

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.10.14398

References


Butlin, R. (1987). Speciation by reinforcement. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2(1), 8–13. doi: 10.1016/0169-5347(87)90193-5

Cohen, D. (1966). Optimizing reproduction in a randomly varying environment. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 12(1), 119–129. doi: 10.1016/0022-5193(66)90188-3

Declerck, S., & Papakostas, S. (2016). Monogonont rotifers as model systems for the study of microevolutionary adaptation and its eco-evolutionary implications. Hydrobiologia, 796(1), 131–144. doi: 10.1007/s10750-016-2782-y 

Franch-Gras, L., García-Roger, E. M., Franch, B., Carmona, M. J., & Serra, M. (2017). Quantifying unpredictability: A multiple model approach for Mediterranean ponds by using satellite imagery. PLOS ONE, 12(11), e0187958. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187958

Franch-Gras, L., García-Roger, E. M., Serra, M., & Carmona, M. J. (2017). Adaptation in response to environmental unpredictability. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 284(1868), 20170427. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.0427

Franch-Gras, L., Hahn, C., García-Roger, E. M., Carmona, M. J., Serra, M., & Gómez, A. (2018). Genomic signatures of local adaptation to the degree of environmental predictability in rotifers. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 16051. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-34188-y

Franch-Gras, L., Tarazona, E., García-Roger, E. M., Carmona, M. J., Gómez. A., & Serra, M. (2019). Rotifer adaptation to the unpredictability of the growing season. Hydrobiologia , 844(1), 257–273. doi: 10.1007/s10750-019-3886-y

Serra, M., García-Roger, E. M., Ortells, R., & Carmona, M. J. (2019). Cyclically parthenogenetic rotifers and the theories of population and evolutionary ecology. Limnetica, 38(1), 67–93. doi: 10.23818/limn.38.13

Tarazona, E., García-Roger, E. M., & Carmona M. J. (2017). Experimental evolution of bet hedging in rotifer diapause traits as a response to environmental unpredictability. Oikos, 126, 1162–1172. doi: 10.1111/oik.04186


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share