Adaptation costs to constant and alternating polluted environments.

Morgan Dutilleul,Denis Réale,Catherine Lecomte,Benoit Goussen,Jean‐Marc Bonzom,Simon Galas

doi:10.1111/eva.12510

Abstract

Some populations quickly adapt to strong and novel selection pressures caused by anthropogenic stressors. However, this short‐term evolutionary response to novel and harsh environmental conditions may lead to adaptation costs, and evaluating these costs is important if we want to understand the evolution of resistance to anthropogenic stressors. In this experimental evolution study, we exposed Caenorhabditis elegans populations to uranium (U populations), salt (NaCl populations) and alternating uranium/salt treatments (U/NaCl populations) and to a control environment (C populations), over 22 generations. In parallel, we ran common‐garden and reciprocal‐transplant experiments to assess the adaptive costs for populations that have evolved in the different environmental conditions. Our results showed rapid evolutionary changes in life history characteristics of populations exposed to the different pollution regimes. Furthermore, adaptive costs depended on the type of pollutant: pollution‐adapted populations had lower fitness than C populations, when the populations were returned to their original environment. Fitness in uranium environments was lower for NaCl populations than for U populations. In contrast, fitness in salt environments was similar between U and NaCl populations. Moreover, fitness of U/NaCl populations showed similar or higher fitness in both the uranium and the salt environments compared to populations adapted to constant uranium or salt environments. Our results show that adaptive evolution to a particular stressor can lead to either adaptive costs or benefits once in contact with another stressor. Furthermore, we did not find any evidence that adaptation to alternating stressors was associated with additional adaption costs. This study highlights the need to incorporate adaptive cost assessments when undertaking ecological risk assessments of pollutants.

Highlights

Environmental changes, such as pollution or habitat fragmentation, have increased in frequency and intensity throughout the world as the result of anthropogenic activities (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005)
We found that C. elegans populations could rapidly adapt to both the uranium and salt environments
Adaptation to uranium or to salt was associated with some fitness costs, as shown by their lower fertility values compared to the control populations

Summary

| INTRODUCTION

Environmental changes, such as pollution or habitat fragmentation, have increased in frequency and intensity throughout the world as the result of anthropogenic activities (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). At generation 18, we transferred individuals from the control, U, NaCl or U/NaCl populations into either the NaCl or the U environment and compared their fitness (i.e., reciprocal-transplant experiment [RT], Hassel, Pedersen, & Söderström, 2005; Iraeta, Monasterio, Salvador, & Díaz, 2006; see Fig. A3 in Appendix S1) This RT experiment allowed us to test whether adaptation to a particular pollutant incurs adaptation costs when the population is subjected to another stressor. We predicted higher adaptation costs for the populations adapted to the alternating U/NaCl environment than for the populations in homogeneous polluted environments (U or NaCl)

| MATERIAL AND METHODS

Findings

| DISCUSSION