Abstract
Contemporary global change is altering ecosystems at an unprecedented pace and scale. This critical period is a crisis for biodiversity, but the perturbations caused by global environmental change also offer new opportunities to study the evolution of species boundaries—their persistence, formation, or collapse—over rapid evolutionary timescales. Increasing temperature means and fluctuations have the potential to alter gene flow between species through changes in species distributions, interactions, life history, and temperature-dependent behavior. This is particularly true for insects, whose geographic ranges, behaviors and life history traits are temperature dependent. Here, we review the potential for climate change to influence gene flow and species boundaries between closely related insect species. We focus on studies that have tracked changes in climate and insect distributions and/or have evaluated temperature dependent reproductive barriers between species.
Highlights
Insect Hybridization and Climate ChangeReceived: 24 April 2019 Accepted: 02 September 2019 Published: 20 September 2019. Citation: Larson EL, Tinghitella RM and Taylor SA (2019) Insect Hybridization and Climate Change
Josh Jahner, University of Nevada, Reno, Specialty section: This article was submitted to Population and Evolutionary
We focus on studies that have tracked changes in climate and insect distributions and/or have evaluated temperature dependent reproductive barriers between species
Summary
Received: 24 April 2019 Accepted: 02 September 2019 Published: 20 September 2019. Citation: Larson EL, Tinghitella RM and Taylor SA (2019) Insect Hybridization and Climate Change. Increasing temperature means and fluctuations have the potential to alter gene flow between species through changes in species distributions, interactions, life history, and temperature-dependent behavior. This is true for insects, whose geographic ranges, behaviors, and life history traits are temperature dependent. Contemporary global change is altering species’ habitat at an unprecedented pace and scale This critical period is a crisis for biodiversity (Dirzo et al, 2014; Wiens, 2016), including insects (Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys, 2019). Increasing temperature means and fluctuations have the potential to alter gene flow between insect species through changes in distributions, interactions, life history, and temperature-dependent behavior. Our goal is to highlight the exciting field-based experiments that are possible as insects respond to changing climate, and the opportunities to understand the origin and maintenance of biodiversity in insect hybrid zones
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