Warmer is better for evolutionary rescue, driving a warm-to-cold bias in habitat colonization dynamics.

Abstract

Evolutionary rescue occurs when populations survive lethal environmental stresses through the rising and fixation of tolerant genotypes. Temperature has long been believed to determine the evolutionary speed of populations and species. Here, we suggest that warmer temperatures can facilitate evolutionary rescue. Moreover, with dispersal among habitats, the advantage in evolutionary rescue for warmer populations may cause a bias in habitat colonization dynamics towards the warm-to-cold direction. We experimentally tested these hypotheses with a model microbial system. Our first experiment showed that bacterial populations at warmer temperatures had a greater chance to evolve resistance and escape the fate of extinction under an antibiotic treatment. In the second experiment, metapopulations that consisted of warm and cold habitats were exposed to the antibiotic stress; local populations that went extinct might be recolonized, and such recolonization events were biased to the warm-to-cold direction. We also examined possible mechanisms underlying the temperature effect on the rapid evolution of resistance in our study system. Our results may help to understand the mechanisms of maintenance of biodiversity and patterns of gene flow among climatic regions, particularly in pest species subject to chemical control treatments.