Abstract
Metabolic rates and life history strategies are both thought to set the “pace of life”, but whether they evolve in tandem is not well understood. Here, using a common garden experiment that compares replicate paired populations, we show that Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) populations that evolved a fast-paced life history in high-predation environments have consistently higher metabolic rates than guppies that evolved a slow-paced life history in low-predation environments. Furthermore, by transplanting guppies from high- to low-predation environments, we show that metabolic rate evolves in parallel with the pace of life history, at a rapid rate, and in the same direction as found for naturally occurring populations. Together, these multiple lines of inference provide evidence for a tight evolutionary coupling between metabolism and the pace of life history.
Highlights
Metabolic rates and life history strategies are both thought to set the “pace of life”, but whether they evolve in tandem is not well understood
We use a combination of field-transplant experiments and population comparisons under common garden conditions to examine whether and how metabolic rate evolves alongside the life history in Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata)
We evaluated the direction and speed at which standard metabolic rate evolves by comparing its values between a naturally occurring population with a fast-paced life history and a descendant population that was transplanted to a low-predation site in the Caroni River drainage 35 years ago and has since evolved a slower-paced life history[24,25]
Summary
Metabolic rates and life history strategies are both thought to set the “pace of life”, but whether they evolve in tandem is not well understood. By transplanting guppies from high- to low-predation environments, we show that metabolic rate evolves in parallel with the pace of life history, at a rapid rate, and in the same direction as found for naturally occurring populations. We first compared pairs of populations with slow- vs fast-paced life histories from both the Oropuche and Yarra River drainages, testing for consistent differences in standard metabolic rate across independent evolutionary transitions from a faster- to a slower-paced life history as guppies invaded low-predation environments within different drainages across Trinidad[20,23]. We evaluated the direction and speed at which standard metabolic rate evolves by comparing its values between a naturally occurring population with a fast-paced life history and a descendant population that was transplanted to a low-predation site in the Caroni River drainage 35 years ago and has since evolved a slower-paced life history[24,25]. There is a strong positive association between the rate of metabolism and a suite of life history traits a 0.035 Oropuche 0.030
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