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Variation is the raw material for evolution. Evolutionary potential is determined by the amount of genetic variation, but evolution can also alter the visibility of genetic variation to natural selection. Fluctuating environments are suggested to maintain genetic variation but they can also affect environmental variance, and thus, the visibility of genetic variation to natural selection. However, experimental studies testing these ideas are relatively scarce. In order to determine differences in evolutionary potential we quantified variance attributable to population, genotype and environment for populations of the bacterium Serratia marcescens. These populations had been experimentally evolved in constant and two fluctuating environments. We found that strains that evolved in fluctuating environments exhibited larger environmental variation suggesting that adaptation to fluctuations has decreased the visibility of genetic variation to selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to parasite exposure, organisms from a variety of taxa undergo a shift in reproductive investment that may trade off with other life-history traits including survival and immunity. By suppressing reproduction in favour of somatic and immunological maintenance, hosts can enhance the probability of survival and recovery from infection. By plastically enhancing reproduction through terminal investment, on the other hand, hosts under the threat of disease-induced mortality could enhance their lifetime reproductive fitness through reproduction rather than survival. However, we know little about the evolution of these strategies, particularly when hosts can recover and even bequeath protection to their offspring. In this study, we develop a stochastic agent-based model that competes somatic maintenance and terminal investment strategies as they trade off differentially with lifespan, parasite resistance, recovery and transgenerational immune priming. Our results suggest that a trade-off between reproduction and recovery can drive directional selection for either terminal investment or somatic maintenance, depending on the cost of reproduction to lifespan. However, some conditions, such as low virulence with a high cost of reproduction to lifespan, can favour diversifying selection for the coexistence of both strategies. The introduction of transgenerational priming into the model favours terminal investment when all strategies are equally likely to produce primed offspring, but favours somatic maintenance if it confers even a slight priming advantage over terminal investment. Our results suggest that both immune priming and recovery may modulate the evolution of reproductive shift diversity and magnitude upon exposure to parasites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that polyandry allows females to increase offspring genetic diversity and reduce the prevalence and susceptibility of their offspring to infectious diseases. We tested this hypothesis in wild-derived house mice ( Mus musculus) by experimentally infecting the offspring from 15 single- and 15 multiple-sired litters with two different strains of a mouse pathogen ( Salmonella Typhimurium) and compared their ability to control infection. We found a high variation in individual infection resistance (measured with pathogen loads) and significant differences among families, suggesting genetic effects on Salmonella resistance, but we found no difference in prevalence or infection resistance between single- vs. multiple-sired litters. We found a significant sex difference in infection resistance, but surprisingly, males were more resistant to infection than females. Also, infection resistance was correlated with weight loss during infection, although only for females, indicating that susceptibility to infection had more harmful health consequences for females than for males. To our knowledge, our findings provide the first evidence for sex-dependent resistance to Salmonella infection in house mice. Our results do not support the hypothesis that multiple-sired litters are more likely to survive infection than single-sired litters; however, as we explain, additional studies are required before ruling out this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenotypic plasticity can enhance a species' ability to persist in a new and stressful environment, so that reaction norms are expected to evolve as organisms encounter novel environments. Biological invasions provide a robust system to investigate such changes. We measured the rates of early growth and development in tadpoles of invasive cane toads ( Rhinella marina) in Australia, from a range of locations and at different larval densities. Populations in long-colonized areas have had the opportunity to adapt to local conditions, whereas at the expanding range edge, the invader is likely to encounter challenges that are both novel and unpredictable. We thus expected invasion-vanguard populations to exhibit less phenotypic plasticity than range-core populations. Compared to clutches from long-colonized areas, clutches from the invasion front were indeed less plastic (i.e. rates of larval growth and development were less sensitive to density). In contrast, those rates were highly variable in clutches from the invasion front, even among siblings from the same clutch under standard conditions. Clutches with highly variable rates of growth and development under constant conditions had lower phenotypic plasticity, suggesting a trade-off between these two strategies. Although these results reveal a strong pattern, further investigation is needed to determine whether these different developmental strategies are adaptive (i.e. adaptive phenotypic plasticity vs. bet-hedging) or instead are driven by geographic variation in genetic quality or parental effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversified bet-hedging, a strategy that leads several individuals with the same genotype to express distinct phenotypes in a given generation, is now well established as a common evolutionary response to environmental stochasticity. Life-history traits defined as diversified bet-hedging (e.g. germination or diapause strategies) display marked differences between populations in spatial proximity. In order to find out whether such differences can be explained by local adaptations to spatially heterogeneous environmental stochasticity, we explored the evolution of bet-hedging dormancy strategies in a metapopulation using a two-patch model with patch differences in stochastic juvenile survival. We found that spatial differences in the level of environmental stochasticity, restricted dispersal, increased fragmentation and intermediate survival during dormancy all favour the adaptive diversification of bet-hedging dormancy strategies. Density dependency also plays a major role in the diversification of dormancy strategies because: (i) it may interact locally with environmental stochasticity and amplify its effects; however, (ii) it can also generate chaotic population dynamics that may impede diversification. Our work proposes new hypotheses to explain the spatial patterns of bet-hedging strategies that we hope will encourage new empirical studies of this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variable maternal provisioning may evolve when there is variation in the quality of offspring environments. The frog Crinia georgiana has high variability in egg size both within and between clutches, independent of female phenotype. It breeds in ponds with high spatial and temporal variation in habitat quality. Egg size strongly affected offspring fitness in good and poor quality offspring environments, whether the egg size difference was from between or within clutches. Since there is a trade-off in egg size and number, these fitness consequences translate to strong effects on maternal fitness. In the variable and unpredictable offspring environment of C. georgiana, the maintenance of variable maternal provisioning both within and between clutches is likely to be an evolved response to the offspring environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mate choice by females may be influenced by both advertizing traits of males, and behaviour of other females. Here, a simple genetic and behavioural model studies the advantages of mate-choice copying. From a genetic point of view, a female preferring to copy others’ mate choice adopts a prudent strategy, because her offspring will inherit the same alleles from their father as the other young in the population. The model predicts that a female should copy others’ mate-choice, unless she encounters a relatively more attractive male than the one she has observed mating, and the attractiveness of the male reflects his genotype. For low or moderate reliability of male signalling, mate-copying is always predicted, even if the newcoming male is more attractive than the first male. This effect is attenuated, however, when the number of females that have already chosen the first male increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]