Abstract
Organisms can modify their surrounding environment, but whether these changes are large enough to feed back and alter their evolutionary trajectories is not well understood, particularly in wild populations. Here we show that nutrient pulses from decomposing Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) parents alter selection pressures on their offspring with important consequences for their phenotypic and genetic diversity. We found a strong survival advantage to larger eggs and faster juvenile metabolic rates in streams lacking carcasses but not in streams containing this parental nutrient input. Differences in selection intensities led to significant phenotypic divergence in these two traits among stream types. Stronger selection in streams with low parental nutrient input also decreased the number of surviving families compared to streams with high parental nutrient levels. Observed effects of parent‐derived nutrients on selection pressures provide experimental evidence for key components of eco‐evolutionary feedbacks in wild populations.
Highlights
Ecological conditions set the stage for evolutionary change
We examined survival selection on egg size and juvenile metabolic rates in wild Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations subjected to manipulated levels of marine-derived parental nutrients in replicate tributary streams of the River Conon, northern Scotland (Fig. S1, Table S1)
There was no effect of maximum metabolic rate on the growth of survivors in streams with either low (P = 0.482) or high (P = 0.459) nutrient levels
Summary
There is increasing evidence that ecological and evolutionary processes can occur on similar timescales scales, thereby opening up the potential for dynamic interactions between them in contemporary time (Post & Palkovacs 2009; Hendry 2017). Organisms can alter their surrounding environment via processes such as habitat modification, nutrient cycling and consumption of resources (Post & Palkovacs 2009; Matthews et al 2014). Direct experimental evaluation of these eco-evolutionary feedbacks in wild populations is currently limited
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