Abstract
Human‐modified habitats rarely yield outcomes that are aligned with conservation ideals. Landscapes that are subdivided by roads are no exception, precipitating negative impacts on populations due to fragmentation, pollution, and road kill. Although many populations in human‐modified habitats show evidence for local adaptation, rarely does environmental change yield outright benefits for populations of conservation interest. Contrary to expectations, we report surprising benefits experienced by amphibian populations breeding and dwelling in proximity to roads. We show that roadside populations of the wood frog, Rana sylvatica, exhibit better locomotor performance and higher measures of traits related to fitness compared with frogs from less disturbed environments located further away from roads. These results contrast previous evidence for maladaptation in roadside populations of wood frogs studied elsewhere. Our results indicate that altered habitats might not be unequivocally detrimental and at times might contribute to metapopulation success. While the frequency of such beneficial outcomes remains unknown, their occurrence underscores the complexity of inferring consequences of environmental change.
Highlights
Roads are a pervasive feature of the global landscape causing wide‐ spread habitat loss and fragmentation (Ibisch et al, 2016; Trombulak & Frissell, 2000)
We have shown that frogs from woodland and roadside populations differ in components of fitness as well as traits that could influence fitness
Adult frogs from roadside pools tended to be older than frogs from woodland pools, for instance with twice as many females in age classes 4–5 compared to 2–3
Summary
Roads are a pervasive feature of the global landscape causing wide‐ spread habitat loss and fragmentation (Ibisch et al, 2016; Trombulak & Frissell, 2000). The ecological influence of roads is well described, evo‐ lutionary consequences are poorly understood (Brady & Richardson, 2017) This knowledge gap exists despite the growing appreciation for evolutionary perspectives in other conservation contexts, where insights point to the rapid and complex changes in traits and fitness in human‐modified habitats (Alberti et al, 2017; Carroll, Hendry, Reznick, & Fox, 2007; Carroll et al, 2014). Applying such perspec‐ tives to the ecological study of roads—where suites of potentially strong and novel agents of natural selection occur—promises to re‐ shape our understanding of road effects (Brady & Richardson, 2017). We discuss our results in terms of the im‐ plications for assessing evolutionary outcomes in human‐modified habitats
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