Evolutionary rescue under environmental stress

Abstract

<p indent="0mm">A population can escape extinction through adaptive evolution when faced with lethal environmental stress, and this has been called evolutionary rescue. The occurrence of evolutionary rescue is accompanied by rapid and significant changes in the genetic composition and phenotypic traits as well as the ecological fitness of a population. The probability of evolutionary rescue depends on the attributes of the population and the properties of the environment. Evolutionary rescue increases by factors that increase the supply of genetic variation and reduce the strength of selection. Here, we summarize the main biotic and abiotic factors affecting the probability of evolutionary rescue. The research advances of evolutionary rescue at the community level and those in nature are introduced. The reasons why evolutionary rescue at the community level may not be the same as that in single-species populations are discussed, and we highlight that evolutionary rescue in laboratory studies may be different from that in nature. We also provide an outlook for future evolutionary rescue studies.