Abstract
The potential for adaptive evolution to enable species persistence under a changing climate is one of the most important questions for understanding impacts of future climate change. Climate adaptation may be particularly likely for short-lived ectotherms, including many pest, pathogen, and vector species. For these taxa, estimating climate adaptive potential is critical for accurate predictive modeling and public health preparedness. Here, we demonstrate how a simple theoretical framework used in conservation biology—evolutionary rescue models—can be used to investigate the potential for climate adaptation in these taxa, using mosquito thermal adaptation as a focal case. Synthesizing current evidence, we find that short mosquito generation times, high population growth rates, and strong temperature-imposed selection favor thermal adaptation. However, knowledge gaps about the extent of phenotypic and genotypic variation in thermal tolerance within mosquito populations, the environmental sensitivity of selection, and the role of phenotypic plasticity constrain our ability to make more precise estimates. We describe how common garden and selection experiments can be used to fill these data gaps. Lastly, we investigate the consequences of mosquito climate adaptation on disease transmission using Aedes aegypti-transmitted dengue virus in Northern Brazil as a case study. The approach outlined here can be applied to any disease vector or pest species and type of environmental change.
Highlights
Climate change is expected to have major impacts on species distributions in coming decades, and predicting these impacts is an area of intense research interest
After presenting mosquito thermal adaptation as a focal case, we discuss how the approach we describe here can be applied to study the adaptive potential of any species in response to any specific environmental change
We focus on evolutionary adaptation as it would enable in situ population persistence under sustained environmental change and is currently the least well-understood climate response (Merilaand Hendry, 2014; Urban et al, 2016; Gonzalez-Tokman et al, 2020)
Summary
Climate change is expected to have major impacts on species distributions in coming decades, and predicting these impacts is an area of intense research interest. We consider the analytic, quantitative-genetic evolutionary rescue model described by Chevin et al, 2010 This model estimates population adaptive potential under climate warming using (Box 1; Figure 1): (1) the maximum population growth rate under optimal conditions ðrmax), (2) the population generation time (T), (3) the phenotypic variance in the trait of interest ðs2Þ, (4) the strength of selection imposed by temperature change ðgÞ, (5) the trait heritability (h2Þ, (6) the degree of phenotypic plasticity in thermal tolerance (b), (7) how the trait optimum changes with temperature (i.e. environmental sensitivity of selection; B), and (8) the expected rate of temperature change during the time period ðhcÞ. Understanding and estimating the potential for climate adaptation in taxa of concern to human health is critical for accurately predicting and preparing for their persistence or shifts in their distributions under climate change
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